The Painful Chasm Between Political Privilege and Shack Reality

It’s time to face a common myth: the idea that people who live in comfort or luxury can empathise with those who live in poverty.

Each election season, well-dressed voices emerge from air-conditioned offices promising to “transform the informal settlements” .

Their feet have never touched the muddy floors of a leaking shack, but they wear the faces of saviours. How can someone who has never experienced a wound heal it?

How can the misery of the valleys of poverty be alleviated by someone from the hills of privilege?

THE PRETENDERS

We have become accustomed to hearing the phrase “we will bring development to the poor” from politicians. However, far too often, these are the same people who have never gone a day without food, water or electricity.

These are people who have never slept in dust, or who have never walked in the dark.

After the votes are counted, they disappear into their comfort zones after campaigning in our dust.

Some people temporarily relocate to informal settlements in an attempt to “understand”. Not because they don’t have other options but rather to save money on living expenses or protect their businesses.

That is convenience, not poverty. They have choices, bank accounts and options.

When the going gets tough, they leave. However, there is no way out for the real sons and daughters of the informal settlements.

Poverty is a painful reality, not a project. It is the sound of a child wailing in the middle of the night as rain pours through the roof.

Because the government has forgotten you, you must endure the humiliation of using plastic bags for sanitary purposes.

Who will actually fight for change, the one who can leave or the one who can’t?

POLITICS OF COMFORT

Our politics have gotten too cozy. Let’s speak the truth without fear.

Instead of being partners in change, the impoverished are utilised as campaign slogans.

As if the impoverished have no voice of their own, political parties recruit candidates from wealthy communities to “speak for the poor”.

However, those who eat while others go hungry cannot lead the revolution.

The same tears cannot be shed by someone sleeping on a king-size bed as Those shed by someone sleeping on a bare floor.

Windhoek is a city with two faces: one aglow with luxury and the other covered in dust and hopelessness.

But we refer to this as unity? We refer to this as freedom?

THE NEW REVOLUTION

When half of a country’s population still lives like refugees in their own country, how can it declare itself an independent nation?

We must wake up from this post-independence illusion. Political freedom without economic justice is nothing but a form of slavery.

The shackles have changed shape – from colonial chains to poverty and exclusion – but they still bind the same people.

If the system delivers too slowly, the people must move faster. If the bus of progress has stopped, we must jump off and board another – the bus of radical transformation.

Delusions need to be dispelled. Without economic justice, political freedom amounts to a different form of slavery: poverty and exclusion.

People must move more quickly if the system is operating too slowly to deliver. We must get off the bus of progress and board the one of radical transformation if the one of progress has stopped.

CALL TO THE PEOPLE

Informal settlement residents are now forced to make their own decision. Don’t let titles, catchphrases or liberation credentials fool you.

Independence was not the end of the fight for land and dignity, it is still being fought in every shack, on every street, and in every hungry stomach.

This is about freedom, not flags. It’s about humanity, not history.

Let those who have lived the pain lead the healing.

Let those who have been harmed rise and rebuild. And let the wealthy know that if you have never slept in the dust of poverty, you cannot speak for them.

The revolution will emerge from the shacks, spearheaded by those who stand to lose nothing but their chains; it won’t be announced in comfort.

• * Sem David I is a youth activist in Windhoek.

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