Wananchi: In Search of Earning a Living

By Monde Ndandani

In Kiswahili, the East African language spoken by black African people, wananchi means the ordinary people or the public. The origin in Kiswahili of wananchi, the plural of mwananchi is inhabitant or citizen. Kiswahili is the African language spoken, used, and understood by majority of Africans in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the view of Arthur Livington, who wrote the introduction section of Gaetano Moscas Elementi di Scienza Politica (1939), his the plain man fits Kiswahilis mwananchi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524682972

Monde Ndandani

Monde Ndandani was born and bred in Madokisini village of Upper Qhora District in a municipality of a small rural town called Dutywa, located in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape Province – one of the nine provinces of the Republic of South Africa. After completing his junior degree at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, he taught at Ohlange High School, Inanda, Durban, the school founded by Dr JL Dube, the first president of the African (Native) Congress in 1900. After ten years of teaching at Ohlange High, he crossed the Atlantic Ocean to attend to his postgraduate studies at the University of Texas-at-Tyler, United States of America, where he completed M.Ed. degree. Hereafter he came back to South Africa, joining the staff of the Faculty of Education at the then University of North-West – now North-West University, North-West Province, South Africa. While teaching at this university, he registered with University of KwaZulu-Natal for Ph.D. Currently he is attending to the final sections of his dissertation under the auspices of Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria. He also had one-year contract employment with the National Department of Basic Education and Training in the Teacher Development Unit.

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© 2017 Monde Ndandani. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse   07/04/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8298-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8297-2 (e)

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NOTE: Wananchi (in Kiswahili, the East African language spoken by black African people): The ordinary people; the public.

ORIGIN: Kiswahili (Wananchi), plural of mwananchi ‘inhabitant, citizen’.

Kiswahili is the African language spoken, used and understood by majority of Africans in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the view of Arthur Livington who wrote the Introduction section of Gaetano Mosca’s Elementi di Scienza Politica (1939), his the plain man fits Kiswahili’s mwananchi.

The Ordinary People: Those who walk the footpaths of the countryside, the streets of small rural towns, the hassle and bustle of city streets of the 21st century in any country around the globe in general, and in the continent of Africa, in particular–crossing traffic lights, getting to offices of all sorts and sizes – workers and job-seekers alike – getting to shoppingmalls to purchase this or the other; commuters - chasing taxis, buses and trains or getting out of these mechanized transport mobiles; street hawkers – with all sorts of merchandise – crowding the sidewalks in the city, especially in taxi-ranks and bus and train stations; hobos and Street Children. Being necessitous is the ubiquitous feature of most of Ordinary People the world over – hence among these are ‘House-maids’ and ‘Garden-boys’.

"The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is ‘rash’ to employ men, and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable – the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fuddled with nonsense for years and years. The objections which are raised are mostly not the objections of experience or of practical men. They are based on highly abstract theories – venerable academic inventions, half misunderstood by those who are applying them today, and based on assumptions which are contrary to the facts…Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader’s instinct that what seems sensible is sensible, and what seems nonsense is nonsense". – J. M. Keynes in a pamphlet to support Lloyd George in the 1929 election.

DEDICATED TO MY LATE SISTER: NELISA {Meet the Expectations and Fulfill!} – A Free and Generous Spirit Personified! Gone too soon, but not before graduating from Rhodes University (South Africa) of the 1980s. Prettiest Girl in our family! Beauty and Brains put together by the Creator of all things in the universe - including the universe itself.

The Working Classes are still, to a vast extent, following blind guides and trusting to leaders and orators outside their own ranks, to achieve that for them which their own efforts, self-sacrifices, and organization can alone effect. They still, unhappily, undervalue mental and moral effort for raising their class and advancing the welfare of their country, and therefore the advice given to them from thirty to forty years ago may still be found useful – Lovett, William (1876). Life and Struggles of William Lovett in his pursuit of Bread, Knowledge and Freedom.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Acknowledgements

Chapter Notes

References

FOREWORD

The following two poems in isiXhosa with the same title: "Kunzima ungaphangeli translating: It is hard and demeaning –{cause a severe loss in the dignity of and respect for} to be unemployed or not earning a living", depicting the plight of the victim of unemployment and heartlessness and very cruel insensitivity of, especially, one’s family member/s or close relative/s, were put together by two amateur poets, Xolani Luhabe and Q. Moloi. Both poems have the same format (stanzas; rhythm and rhyme), and are narrated and poetized by the recipients of scorn –the unemployed themselves. The significance and coincidence of this binary poetic creation is that these two poems were written at different times by two standup comedians-cum amateur poets who did not know who the other poet was, and thus reflect (in a measure) the normative, if not cultural vein, of the (elite/urban) Xhosa-speaking people in South Africa:

KUNZIMA UNGAPHANGELI!!!

By: Xolani Luhabe.

Xa ungasebenziyo, akutshiwo ukuba usika isonka, kuthiwa UGEBHULA isonka!

[When you are unemployed {and not earning any income}, it is not said you slice bread – instead you cut big portions of bread]

Uba ubukele i-TV, kuthiwa UJAMELA i-TV or UKHAMISELE i-TV UGQIBA UMBANE!

[If you are watching television, it is said you always sit there in-front of the television with your mouth open increasing the consumption of scarce electricity]

Uba utya amaqanda, kuthwa UQHUFUZA amaqanda; nantso into oyaziyo.

[If you eat boiled eggs, it is said you eat these eggs with their shells, making click-sounds in your mouth as you eat them – and that is the only thing you know best].

Xa usela i-juice, kuthwa UMHOMHA i-juice.

[When you drink juice (which is pricey than sodas), it is said you drink it from the bottle, without using measured glassware]

Uba uyatya, kuthwa wazi nje u(ku)XHAFUZA ukutya!

[If you eat anything because you are hungry, it is said you eat with your mouth open and you eat greedily]

Uba uqaba i-rama, kuthwa UYAYINYHIBHELA!

[If you smear rama {butter} on your slices of bread, it is said you smear it so thick that you make sure you waste it]

Wahlala nje phandle ecaleni kwendlu, kuthwa into oyaziyo kukujika nelanga – Nkqi ukukhangela umsebenzi. [If you are found next to the house outside during day time, it is said that the only thing you know is to bask in the sun instead of going out to look for a job.]

Xa utshaya, kuthwa UYAMPAKUZA!

[When you smoke, it is said you are puffing [with a tress on the letter P] smoke out of your mouth]

KUNZIMA UNGAPHANGELI VHA!!!

By Q. Moloi

Xa uvakatshele isihlobo esinye jwii, kuthiwa into oyaziyo KUKUYABULA kulo lonke eli limiweyo!

[When you go out to visit only one friend, it is said the only thing you know is to senselessly wander around all over the village looking for something you do not even know]

Xa ubuza impilo kumntu omnye, kuthiwa into oyaziyo kukuhamba UGEVUZA iindaba kuyo yonke le lokishi or ilali. [When you greet only one person and enquire on his/her well-being,

It is said the only thing you know is to gossip all over the village or the township]

Xa usohlwaya inkewana egezayo apha ekhaya, kuthiwa into oyaziyo KUKUNGOMBA iintsana ezi zam. [When you slightly spank one of the children of this home who is naughty, it is said the only thing you know is to physically abuse my little babies.]

Xa kungabuyanga tshintshi evenkileni, kuthiwa into oyaziyo KUKUZAVAZA imali le yam ONGAYAZIYO nokuba icholwa phi na.

[When you do not bring change from the money you had been given to go and buy anything from the store in the neighbourhood, it is said the only thing you know is to squander money which you do not know how to earn]

Xa ufunyenwe usaphumle kancinane udiniwe kukuhamba ufuna umsebenzi, kuthiwa into OYAZIYO KUKURHONA ZONKE IIMINI EZI!

[When they find you resting just for a short while after going up and down looking for a job, it is said what you know best is to sleep and snore the whole day]

Xa ucela ibhotolo, kuthiwa UZAKUYIFUMANA APHO WAWUYIFUNDELE KHONA!

[When you ask for butter to spread on bread, it is said you will get it where you learnt that bread goes with butter to be nutritious and tasty!]

[The last lines in both poems have ‘a sting in the tail’. In Luhabe’s poem, the narrator ends by BLAMING or passing judgement on himself : Oh! Kunzima ukubangu MAHLALELA!]

[In Moloi’s version of the poem, the tormentor ridicules the unemployed subject in the poem for having acquired some measure of EDUCATION which has brought him NOTHING, such that this victim (of unemployment) must get used to eating dry bread.]

PREFACE

In the realm of similes picked up from the wardrobe of metaphors, let us use ‘Malaria’ and ‘Mosquito nets’ – [life-threatening symptoms and immunization provisions] - while engaging with the discourses in this book. Marshy places or wetlands provide breeding areas and nest-spaces for mosquitoes, some of which kind are malaria carriers. It is claimed by medical researchers that mosquitoes have killed more human beings than all other animals in the world.

A. Personality and Behaviour Traits Representing ‘Malaria Viruses’:

Self-worth (draining thereof); Self-Respect (hemorrhaging hereof); Purpose for Living (running out of); Contribution to one’s Family (absence of); Home and Community (negative perceptions by); Family (apparent lack of support and a big disappointment at); Image (self-observed as poor, pathetic); Aspirations (dying); Ambition (dying or dead); Giving in and Giving up (suffocated by hopelessness); Disillusionment; Hopelessness (after numerous attempts to get employment/Means of Earning a Living and Rescue Self-Respect); Failure (regarding one’s self as a failure in life); Alcohol and drug consumption trajectories; Diminishing Work Ethic in general; Helplessness generated by observed daily scaffolded activities of people earning their living; Public Begging consequent to absence of opportunity to earn a living; Watching one’s Life Wasting Away; Belief in the Almighty or Allah and Power of Prayer (losing one’s faith in one’s religion); Appeasement of Ancestral Spirits (conceptualizing these as being responsible for one’s fate in being unemployed or unsuccessful in creating means of earning a living); Contemplations of Taking One’s Seemingly Useless Life by allowing this virus to graduate from Malaria to being Ebola virus!

[Of ‘Exhaling Marshes’, ‘Parasites’, ‘Diseases’, Unborn children, Undercooked meat, ‘Worms’, and ‘Elephantiasis’!]:

Malaria is an intermittent and remittent {as a fever - characterized by fluctuating body temperatures} fever caused by a protozoan parasite which invades the red blood cells and is transmitted by mosquitoes in many tropical {very hot and humid} and subtropical regions. The parasite belongs to the Plasmodium{phylum Sporozoa} and is transmitted by female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Sporozoa/Apicomplexa is a phylum of mainly parasitic spore-forming protozoans that have a complex life cycle with sexual and asexual generations. They include the organisms that cause Malaria, Babesiosis, Coccidiosis and Toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasmosis, in turn, is a disease caused by toxoplasmas, transmitted chiefly through undercooked meat, soil, or in cat faeces. Symptoms of infection generally pass unremarked in adults, but can be dangerous to unborn children.

The term malaria originally denoted the unwholesome atmosphere caused by the exhalations of marshes, to which the disease was formerly attributed.

Anopheles is a mosquito of the genus, which is particularly common in warmer countries and includes the mosquitoes that transmit the malaria parasite to humans. The word Anopheles is derived from Greek language meaning unprofitable or useless.

Culex is a mosquito of the genus, which includes a number of kinds commonly found in cooler regions. They do not transmit malaria, but can pass on a variety of other parasites including those causing filariasis – a tropical disease caused by the presence of filarial worms, especially in the lymph vessels where heavy infestation can result in elephantiasis.

Elephantiasis is a condition in which a limb or other part of the body becomes grossly enlarged due to obstruction of the lymphatic vessels, typically by the nematode parasites which cause filariasis. Nematode is a worm of the large phylum Nematoda, such as a round worm or threadworm].

B. Weaving mosquito nets and opening space for solid walk-ways:

Revisit one’s acquired skills - formal and informal; Purging one’s Self-Pity; Learning to Humble one’s self –accept any gesture of help from people whom one knows; Learning to live with less (travel less unless travelling to places that may assist to get one re-employed; Collect small change -10c to R1); Tell one’s Friends, Colleagues and Acquaintances that one is looking for Gainful Employment; Plan ways to get some Income either as a member of the Collective or as an Individual (co-operatives, SMME, sell common utilities and food items, especially for children in rural villages); Work in the Garden and Plant Food Crops; Get involved in one’s Community Work; Accept Volunteering Work; Keep the Hope Alive on Re-employment; Start one’s own thing irrespective how small if the social environment is suitable; Do Jogging or Road Running and use a Skipping Rope [This takes one’s mind away from stresses of being unemployed]; Attend to one’s Hobbies seriously; Read; Borrow Newspapers, Magazines & Journals; Re-read one’s own books; Read inspiring Chapters of the Bible or the Quran.

Note: Phoenix is a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn. Associated with the Sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. The phoenix was subsequently adopted as a symbol in Early Christianity.

C. Positioning for Self-Reliance:

Being without an employer and rendered jobless maybe a harsh but an essential lesson in getting self-employed and as an educational experience to the self – Education-For-Self-Reliance (EfSR). It must be a risky situation when one’s survival in any place where people are employed is in the hands of another earthling or a group thereof, who happen to be monitors or Heads of Sections/Units in the Public Service. Public service work in all countries of the world is the exception in this regard, but the Public Employer which gets individualized (as in Heads of Departments or Human Resource Head Officials) then also becomes risky to Work-seekers searching in this field. In this case, the service/s of potential Public Employees are likely to be impacted upon by the negative conduct and nature of the individualized Public Employer, as checks and balances on these personalities who ‘individualize’ the Public Employer are not closely observed for the benefit of the potential Public Employee. Public service aught to be citizens working to advance their country amongst countries of the world and nurture the welfare of fellow citizens and those people who are non-citizens hosted by their country.

There is a blank space in any education system in any country in the world that prepares its learners and students to be employed by somebody else or company or organization or institution, except in the case where the country’s learners and students are being groomed by the country’s education system to fit somewhere in the Public Service for the country, as referred to above. Wananchi Work-seekers’ Woes are sourced in this blank space in public education. As long as this blank space is not filled, economic sciences will always have the concept of "Full Employment" for such countries and in such education provisioning.

The upper rungs of EfSR:

Note: EfSR demands both objectified diligence and focused determination from its students. EfSR, ipso facto, provides no conceptual space for giving up or giving in, since its acquisition arms the self as and when social institutions meant to prop up the self, fail to do so for one reason or the other. Detailing on DIY (Do-It-Yourself), Diamandis, P. H. and Kotler, S. (2014) provide the full length of how far this area of hands and minds of human beings reaches. These authors have paged back in the early beginnings of DIY and tell their readers that a Do-It-Yourself revolution has been brewing for the past fifty years [dating back from 2014], but lately it’s begun to bubble over. In today’s world, the purview of backyard tinkerers [include here Bush Mechanics; traditional/informal builders of walls for houses (iingcibi); fence builders (abatsali bocingo); horse riders (who, obviously, are not professional jockeys); informal practitioners of herbalism; shoe-repairers; makers of African traditional beer plus amarhewu and African cultural dishes; African craft-item makers] has extended far beyond custom cars and homebrew computers, and now reaches into once-esoteric fields like genetics and robotics. The Do-It-Yourself work ethic: This ethic has a long history, dating back at least as far as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay Self Reliance, resurfacing again in the Arts and Crafts renaissance of the early twentieth century, then gaining even more steam with the hot-rodding and home improvement movements of the 1950s.

INTRODUCTION

Rre Tshepo Tshola is well-known and famous in Sub-Saharan Africa for his music. This Lesotho-born musician is intimately known in South Africa and in his own country as The Village Pope. Southern African students studying in the United States universities during the 1990s when they got together for their own brand of End-of-the-Year-Parties, nostalgic about home in Africa, would play loud Hugh Masekela’s, Brenda Fassie’s and Tshepo Tshola’s music. One of the most popular music tracks of The Village Pope at that time when he was the lead vocalist for the band known as Sankomota was in SeSotho with some of the lyrics going thus: "Ophothile matsoho ushebille banna besebetsa wena!" – [You are folding your arms, looking on other people working or getting to work, You!]. (The title of the song is "Now or Never). Those words would spur the young and old Southern African students, not only to come back home after their graduations in the US tertiary institutions, but also to come back and inject energy in their respective SADC countries’ economy. At his prime, Tshepo Tshola would draw large crowds to any music festival here in South Africa and the same song would not fail to have the same message and urge to the music-loving crowds, especially with urging lyrics that go: Tsoa ntate tsoa! Tsamaya oyeyibatlela tsa bophilo. Tsoa uyiketstetse" [Translating into English as: Wake up Man wake up! Go out and seek means of earning a living. Wake up and do this for yourself], otherwise ‘Life is or will pass you by’.

Music ends, and without making reference to Bronislaw Malinoski’s Hierarchy of Needs, any working-age human being has to work towards getting a place to stay; having clothes on one’s back and food to eat at meal times. To access these items one has to work and earn an income, otherwise, without one being provided by one’s parents’ home these human basic needs, one becomes a hobo. Hence, being employed and earning an income, or a wage, or salary, on the bigger picture, such a salaried person contributes to the tax fund of his/her country; contributes to the figures of the country’s Gross National Product (GNP); contributes to the indigent Children’s Support Grant, but the epicenter of being employed (or earning a living) feeds the soul and the personhood of the one who is employed or self-employed and thus works during the working days of the week, which weeks make up months of the year – from January to December until one is 65 years and sometimes over that conventional pensionable age. Before this age limit, from the age of 21, and sometimes, for those who are convenienced to have had gainful employment earlier, being unemployed – not earning a living, (unless one is attending school, technikon or university) can be equated to being injected with a virus that will surely lead to one’s death, if not effectively treated and expunged by getting re-employed or earning a living in one orthodox way or the other.

Music plays again: The late Sipho Gumede, an amazing jazz guitarist, has as one of the tracks in one of his classic CDs with a title: "When Days are Dark, Friends are Few. The bitterness of this truth statement becomes even more bitter when even the siblings of the one injected with the virus of being unemployed – not earning a living - begin to look at their own flesh and blood as an impending burden on their working lives, making their houses psychologically uncomfortable for the one who has just been banished from salaried employment [Check the poems by Xolani Luhabe and Q. Moloi in the Foreword]. In the process of collection of wisdom, as one continues to live, it is vital to note that learning to rely on one’s self during one’s Dark Days should be at the beginning chapters of one’s book of life. A significant number of hobos in a significant number of towns and cities around the world, have a significant number of their families that could be graceful and house them during the time their ‘suns’ are temporarily covered by their ‘dark clouds’. Hence, one of the self-imposed tasks of this book will be: How to Make Friends with One’s Self". For Christians, the Bible teaches that God Helps Those Who Help Themselves!

In this context, our faith in the human race is revived by such leaders amongst us as the first president of democratic South Africa, Dr Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela (vide infra); President Barack Hussein Obama who, during his 2009 inaugural speech made reference to ‘the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, which sees us through our darkest hours’. On Martin Luther King anniversary (9.13 BST 28 August, 2013), President Obama also spoke of the right for the pursuit of happiness, not only of Americans but all peoples of the world and that such pursuit requires the dignity of work, decent pay, some measure of material security and the economic opportunity – the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life. Truth is, however, such utterances are a temporary lull in the stormy life of the jobless with no immediate chances of earning a living for one’s self and one’s immediate family. The economies of countries in developed and developing countries are struggling to achieve what Clinton, B. (2011) believes is the ‘High Way’ of economy in any country during the 21st century, namely: to restore economic growth, job creation, financial responsibility, resolving the mortgage crisis and pursuing a strategy to get us ‘back in the future business’.

Wananchi’s Common Lessons Essential for Self-Reliance:

(i) Learn to cook/prepare affordable meals (Rural folks and some ‘Township’ people are good phoenix ground for this).

(ii) Keep yourself clean (although water will be scarce at one time or the other, it is generally easily accessible to wash one’s body and clothes) and in the process of attending to one’s personal hygiene, look after your teeth in particular (keep a tooth brush and some amount of toothpaste) so that one does not have a problem in enjoying green mealies (corn) - cooked or roasted- and chicken bones, including those found in mutton or beef stew.

Keep a close shaven head (keeping a comb and hair-food creams is luxury when one has few coins in one’s pocket or worse still, when one is living in the streets).

(iii) Never step over thrown away money coins (-5c; 10c; 20 c; 50c; R1; R2 coins) –dropped by people who have not learnt that taking care of cents renders rands to take care of themselves - dropped randomly, especially in the streets of towns and cities - Do not have any inhibitions – Pick these up, and sooner than later, one has coins enough to buy bread and milk! - Organize yourself a container to throw these coins in until such a container is full.

(iv) [If one has not started a family (married with a child or children) and being unemployed comes around, whether you have been staying at home whilst you were earning a salary or one has been staying around the place of employment becomes vitally significant. Malinoski’s basic needs quickly take a frightful figure ahead. Rent, car and house furniture installments, clothing accounts, groceries, petrol/bus/taxi fare, approach one as days get on to weeks and weeks get on to be months and before you can say you are ready to engage with the state of being without a salary/wage, house/flat rent money is just not enough and you get evicted i.e. if one has not been staying at one’s parents’ home. Furniture (plasma television set; sofa’s in the Living Room; double door refrigerator; that bigger coffee-table; washing machine) bought through hire-purchase gets re-possessed from the recently middle management employees (after three to six months of non-payment), and personal savings that have to be stretched to provide for daily basic needs during indefinite period when one will not be getting monthly wage/salary are used with constant scare as to when, even these savings, will run dry. The looming scenario of being without a roof over one’s head and no food to eat reduces the one in this context to a creature of pity, with darting eyes and dry lips (a sign of not having one’s meals of the day) and with shabby clothing. When one’s photo is this, the owner puts it away where no one can see it. This is a vulnerable stage and the metaphoric Malaria ‘virus’ begins to multiply. These are the times that the few friends whom one still has, even beside siblings, provide ‘phoenix’ ground space.]

(v) The sooner the one visited by being unemployed or loss of self-employment gets on the ‘phoenix mode’, the better. Otherwise, the proverbial Malaria ‘virus’ develops to be Ebola Virus: suicide case - dramatic exit from this state of being a nobody; rob banks and get shot by security guards or police (these scenarios are not only confined to the movie and/or television stories watched from the comfort of couches in people’s Living Rooms - Check on ATM machine crimes not long ago here in South Africa of post 2000); getting access to cheap alcohol, because (hypothetically) drugs would be beyond the few coins the unemployed have in their pockets and get stupidly drunk and get run over by fast vehicles or crossing railway lines with fast moving trains or just pass out in the open during very cold winter nights. (This also happens and there are records of these in a number of Police Stations in a number of towns and cities around the world).

(vi) Stressing heavily also does result in sudden death and stressing with the unemployed is a minute-by-minute affair. Each time one opens one’s wallet to buy common grocery items (like salt or sugar or toilet paper), stress just envelops one’s faculties. One only has to count how many times unemployed people with no significant amount of money, have to buy those grocery items to check on how such people literally stay with stress and internalized misery, also resulting in fatal ulcer.

Generic knowledge about the plight of the unemployed sector of South Africa’s citizenry does not need one to be a social scientist or a researcher of note. Yet, that group of employees in the management level of places of employment in this country, including tertiary institutions, at the stroke of a pen, will get other employees deprived of their employment. Ironically, some South African tertiary institutions management persons initiate and execute cases of frivolous nature that have some of their Grounds and Gardens employees deprived of their wage employment. [Here are the details of typical cases of Disciplinary Hearings in one of these tertiary institutions: A male person, age -approximately 50 years, working in the agriculture section of this tertiary institution, was taken by his supervisor to a Disciplinary Hearing for allegedly stealing half-dozen eggs from the fowl-run of this Agriculture section. The accused had one arm not functioning well and one eye was grey and had obviously poor vision. Part of the duties this man had to do was to collect eggs in one of the fowl-runs of this Agriculture section of this tertiary institution and pack them in standard egg-packages. One afternoon, these egg-packages were not enough and "the accused" wrapped the remaining six eggs and left them in the fowl-run. His supervisor, in his inspection rounds, found the wrapped-up six eggs and concluded that this man intended to steal these eggs and took him straight to a hearing that could have seen this worker dismissed from his place of employment. The institution had to have a legal professional person chairing this Hearing at a significant fee and have the whole day set aside for the case of allegedly six stolen eggs!]

(vii) In the bigger picture of employment and conditions thereof in this context, South Africans will, forever, ask themselves whether the 34 lives lost during the Marikana Massacre could not have been avoided, given that in the midst of people involved in this saga there were individuals, a significant number of them, with relevant skills and experience and in such positions in this employment place (known as Lonmin) who could have applied their schooled minds such that this sad and avoidable shooting and killing of 34 employees could have been avoided (vide infra).

Thomas Piketty (2014:39), a professor at the Paris School of Economics, opens Chapter One of his Magnum Opus thus:

On August 16, 2012, the South African police intervened in a labor conflict between workers at the Marikana platinum mine near Johannesburg and mine’s owners: the stockholders of Lonmin, Inc., based in London. Police fired on the strikers with live ammunition. Thirty-four miners were killed. As often in such strikes, the conflict primarily concerned wages: the miners had asked for a doubling of their wage from 500 to 1,000 euros a month. After the tragic loss of life, the company finally proposed a monthly raise of 75 euros.

(viii) Large scale loss of jobs in the major industries in this country, as would be the case in any developing country in the Third World, should be looked at against all possibilities of achieving full employment to achieve a measure of balance between the demand and supply of goods and services for the country’s population. However, the curse of colonialism on the historically colonized countries has stayed with them post the years of these historical epochs. Prioritizing education, particularly agricultural studies (in their entirety) flooding all its rural communities in South Africa, have always been the most spoken and debated about by her politicians and by the village people themselves. Yet, to date (2000-2014/15) provision of education for the working class and rural communities has remained conspicuously insufficient. Instead, a pitiful percentage of people whose original homes are in the rural villages and townships, and who have attained graduate and postgraduate qualifications and thus are in lucrative remunerative positions in our economy, publicly maintain that, in-spite of their previous poverty situations and poor schooling history, they managed to make it and thus can everybody else from similar background. This is not true and everybody knows it. This is just a poor ploy of encouraging multitudes of people in the doldrums to stop addressing the issues of their lot and pullout of this lot as individuals; and if such pullout-attempts succeed, such routes run parallel to rampant capitalism highway.

When engaging with matters of this nature, making reference to specific numbers gives a ring of reality. For example, Mills, G. (2010: 294) points out that 15 million people in South Africa are dependent on redistributive, welfare efforts of government for their survival. He goes on to report his observation as follows:

Africans are likely, unless things change, to go hungry at various points in their lives. One third of Africans, some 250 million people, are already malnourished. Even to progress to adulthood, Africans have to survive infant mortality rates triple those in the developing world. This was evidenced by the continent’s life expectancy. Aside from the mental trauma of this environment, it is difficult to work, at least productively, when one is sick a lot of the time.

(ix) After three months of being unemployed, even if one has land to grow food crops, going without day’s meals becomes common for the simple reason that the grocery bin or store-place in the kitchen or living room may have a few items both to cook or fry – no bread,