Privatisation profligate in the of political, economic and social
Professor Dama Mosweunyane | Monday February 5, 2024 06:00
The conspicuous reason why middle class people cannot rescue anybody from poverty is because of their naked arrogance and gargantuan ardent desire to accumulate filthily.
As stated by De Silva (2022), the middle-class people feel they should prove their worth to the upper class. After all, they did not grow up with the same advantages those in the upper class had. As a result, they may act arrogantly to try and fit in or impress those who are in the upper class.
To expect the middle class to save the poor people from their economic, social, political and technological hardships is in defiance of the law of propinquity, which dictates that proximity is important in how people relate.
The middle class women are in some cases the worst oppressors of poor women who they exploit as domestic workers, making them work longer hours, denying them the opportunity to visit their partners and refusing them to bring their children to their hostile work places. They are usually confined to the servant quarters that are located away from the main houses, so that the economic, political, social and technological distant can be noticeably maintained.
The situation for servants in the former British colonies has not changed since the Victorian England because a servant is normally kept under constant scrutiny and constantly reminded of their inferiority.
In some instances, water scarcity is as a result of natural disasters such as droughts. However, it can be argued that lack of planning by African countries that are prone to natural disasters often aggravates the situation. For instance, floods often kill more people who live in mud huts than those who live in well-constructed mansions. As stated by UNICEF (2022) in the horn of Africa, the protracted drought has led to a water crisis, with more than 8.5 million people facing dire water shortages across the region. Water scarcity is killing livestock, drying up crops and driving “own” servants and feel they have the power to go through their belongings whenever they want, to make sure they haven’t got anything which they object to. The middle class women often abuse their servants emotionally and in some cases even physically. This observation is not unique to the British because it is mimicked even in Africa where it is aggravated by lack of legislations against it.
The problem that should be addressed has to do with discrimination that is influenced by social class because men and women of the lower class receive the same form of atrocious treatment from middle class men and women. Notably, social class affects the life of individuals through poverty, classism, and other forms of economic inequality (Liu and Ali, 2008). According to Chancel, Cogneau, Gethin, and Myczkowski (2019), despite strong economic growth in many African countries, human development and poverty indicators have not progressed as expected. To some degree, it has to be admitted that foreign forces still influence the horrendous economic conditions of the African continent by supporting unscrupulous leaders who they easily control. This situation explains why as noted by Kingsburg, Remenyi, McKay and Hunt (2004) foreign political intervention has been used to maintain in power governments that serve elite interests, rather than the masses of the people. Africa is undeniably adulterated with comprador bourgeoisie.
Provision of water and sanitation tantalisation
The provision of water and proper sanitation has proven to be empty promises in most African countries, which denies poor people water despite its indispensability. In Botswana, failure to pay for water at the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC), which is a corporation that is responsible for the sale of water, can result in water disconnection. This cruel action by the government-aided organisation often leaves the poor families without water to drink, which violates their fundamental right to exist.
In some instances, water scarcity is as a result of natural disasters such as droughts. However, it can be argued that lack of planning by African countries that are prone to natural disasters often aggravates the situation.
For instance, floods often kill more people who live in mud huts than those who live in well-constructed mansions. As stated by UNICEF (2022) in the horn of Africa, the protracted drought has led to a water crisis, with more than 8.5 million people facing dire water shortages across the region. Water scarcity is killing livestock, drying up crops and driving families from their homes. It is worthy to note that even when disasters strike, the African leaders and their children do not often get directly affected. The State houses that they occupy are the safest places in the continent. When people languish in poverty, the leaders are enjoying the ill-gotten opulence. According to Chancel, Cogneau, Gethin, and Myczkowski (2019), Africa has the highest gap between average incomes of the top 10% and incomes of the bottom 50%. Average incomes of the top 10% are about 30 times higher than those of the bottom 50%.
In a continent that has people who are homeless, the provision of water and sanitation in such instances is not always possible. As observed by Rabian-Mohammed and Oudshoorn (2021), while the right to housing is a fundamental right per article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘homelessness’ is still not comprehensively recognised or addressed as a social issue in many countries, including many within North Africa. However, the problem is not only confined to North Africa as noted by Tenai and Mbewu (2020), who indicated that an estimated number of homeless people in South Africa varied between 100, 000 and 200, 000 in 2020. It is important to state that South Africa is amongst the countries that have better economies in the continent. The provision of water and sanitation is obviously still a pipedream in the continent and cannot be realised by 2030 as per the dictates of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
It is disturbing to learn that as indicated by UNICEF (2023), more than 70% of the population in Eastern and Southern Africa (340 million people) have no access to basic sanitation services. Among these, 98 million people practice open defecation. It is easy to conclude that the continent of Africa should do much to meet the exigencies of its population. This requires deliberate efforts in ascertaining that programmes are put in place for citizens of the continent, than to live under the illusion that foreign forces can rescue the continent from the economic, social, political and technological deprivation through boomerang foreign aid. It is important to indicate that Asian Development Bank (2006) had this to say about lack of water and poverty; water and poverty are inextricably linked.
Poor access to water and insufficient sanitation affect the health of the poor, their food security, and their prospects for making a living. Nakagiri et.al (2015) notes that access to improved sanitation in urban poor areas of developing countries is low. Urban poor areas, commonly referred to as slums, are heavily populated areas that are characterised by substandard and unplanned infrastructure, poverty, and lack basic services like water and sanitation. According to the United Nations (2019), on a global scale, half of the people who drink water from unsafe sources live in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 24% of the population have access to safe drinking water and 28% have basic sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households. The problem of lack of water and sanitation facilities in Africa is compounded by the use of pit latrines, which contaminates underground water where it is available. The contamination of underground water often leads to water borne diseases that attack mostly rural populations and compromise their productivity levels when unwell. As stated by Lahue and Alexander (2018), among the many gastrointestinal diseases of importance in developing countries, waterborne and foodborne protozoan diseases that involve faecal-oral transmission, such as giardia and cryptosporidium, are a growing concern due to their association with poor sanitation and inadequate water treatment facilities.
As it is indicated by UNICEF (2022), achieving the SDGs targets in Africa will require a 12-fold increase in current rates of progress on safely managed drinking water, a 20-fold increase for safely managed sanitation and a 42-fold increase for basic hygiene services. It is evident that Africa is highly likely not to overcome the impediments to provision of water and sanitation facilities before 2030. Even in countries such as Botswana, which are believed to be doing relatively well, Lahue and Alexander (2018) notes that as with the rest of Africa, a large population in certain regions of the country still use simple or vented pit latrines.
Corruption and African underdevelopment
The main economic, political and social problems of the African continent can be attributed to corruption. It is through corruption that the resources that could ameliorate the living conditions of the continental citizens are siphoned by African leaders who are inured to political, social and economic evil. Most often, such resources are exported to western countries where they get stashed in private accounts in commercial banks. The main problem in Africa is that there is social acceptance of corruption even amongst the ordinary citizens, who glorify the continental leaders who cannot account for their ill-gotten wealth. The political leaders take advantage of the situation and allow corruption to permeate economic, political and social continental structures. According to Transparency International (2023), corruption creates and increases poverty and exclusion. While corrupt individuals with political power enjoy lavish lives, millions of Africans are deprived of their basic needs like food, health, education, housing, access to clean water and sanitation. Sarassoro (1979) pointed out in the seventies, official corruption has been widespread in African countries in the postcolonial period and has contributed considerably to political instability, public distrust of the governments and economic reverses and failure to attract foreign capital.
It is important to note that if Africa cannot embark on an exercise to enforce wealth declaration by the political leaders, corruption at a grant scale will remain institutionalised, making it difficult for the continent to rescue its people from abject poverty by 2030. A lot of African resources that could be expended to uplift the economic conditions of the poor leave the continent through corruption. As pointed out by CAAT and The Corner House (2009): Multilateral Development Banks estimate that some $400 billion has been looted from African states and stashed in foreign bank accounts, around $140 billion from Nigeria alone. The African Union estimates that $148 billion a year leaves the continent because of corruption, and 80-90% of the illicit overflows never return to the continent. Between $20-40 billion of corrupt money is estimated to flow from transition and developing countries into Western banks annually.
The amount of both financial and natural resources that are plundered from the economies of African countries happen because the continent is littered with gaucherie corrupt leaders who serve the Western powers. The African governments ascertain that financial resources that are looted from Western countries do not get into commercial institutions in the continent. The Western governments do not reciprocate, but instead continue to allow the inflow of money looted from the African continent, some of which come to the continent in the form of loans that are obtained from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This situation means Africans get denied jobs, better facilities such as schools, clinics and water, which condemn them to illiteracy and shorten their lives.