Have you ever imagined how the world would be if equity and equality, as propagated by the rich and religious fanatics, weren’t fallacies as far as humanity and human socialisation and organisation are concerned?
Have you ever imagined how the world would be if everyone either had the same abilities and resources, or there was no reason and motivation towards the death-level competition for resources?
Would there be any rich man privileges and need for power if there was no poverty in this world? Would there be need for such privileges as security and secure neighbourhoods with vetting committees for residents if everyone could afford what the rich have?
Would there be exclusive and discriminately protected members clubs, restaurants, schools, hospitals and other social spaces if there weren’t poor people to idle in those spaces, beg or pose security threats? Could there be sociocultural, socioeconomic and sociopolitical segregation if everyone had the ability to afford a residence in Muthaiga?
Come back home just a little folks . . . would your “waheshimiwas” still be “heshimiwad” if all of you had the same resources as they do, positions aside? Would they still be able to control and manipulate the masses if the masses could also have matching resources to facilitate their independent decision-making and living as opposed to the controlled bare survival that has been manufactured and ably serviced by the system that is controlled by the rich?
Would the Kleptocratic System get justification to create, reserve and exclusively confer those privileges to the “waheshimiwas” if the masses weren’t so poor to a level of being “shameless and lazy beggars” and security threats to the “waheshimiwas”? The same “waheshimiwas” that are supposed to enact and implement progressive laws and policies that can sustainably pull the poor out of the begging? But they deliberately choose not to!
Could capitalism have thrived or be thriving if there wasn’t any deliberately engineered poverty? Could the billionaires be billionaires exploiting the poor with their legal counterfeits if everyone had the ability and resources to produce as per their needs?
History, both biblical and scientific, has proven that the world is rigged in such a way that there must be poverty for the rich to thrive, be powerful, control and exploit the masses, and enjoy the legalised social, political, cultural and economic segregation and privileges. As such, the rich, who are alive to that fact, have and continue to do everything in and even beyond their power and abilities to maintain that status quo; some even die trying.
Poverty is the greatest injustice in the world, and the only source of insecurity because it is the open-eye manifestation of the inequity, inequality and savage negative competition that exists in the human race.
And it is part of my faith and ideological belief as ably opined by Frederick Douglass; “Where justice is denied, poverty is enforced, ignorance prevails; and one class (of the poor and ignorant) is made to feel that the society (and its systems) is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, (defraud, exploit) and degrade them. (As such), neither persons nor property will (ever) be safe.”
That's because as the poor are busy chasing what the rich have, the rich are busier protecting and holding onto what they have at all costs in order to maintain their rule and dominance over the poor; because it's only what they (rich) have that makes them superior and enables them to continue to control and exploit the poor.
And if the poor were to get their hands on what the rich have, then that will take away all the power and privileges that the rich enjoy over the poor. That chase by the poor for what the rich have is what makes the rich insecure because they believe that given a chance, the poor will grab everything by whatever means necessary, just so that they can also enjoy the power and privileges.
The aforementioned has always been the genesis of the corporate power rule: you cannot control the masses (with empty hands), instead, control the inalienable resources and the masses will be at your mercy. The control of the masses through the hoarding of those inalienable resources can only be substituted by religious lunacy.
These facts have been validated by the fact that we even have different sets of laws for the rich and privileged vs the poor and disadvantaged, but for the same crimes. An obvious case in point is Section 322 of the Penal Code that hangs a poor and ignorant person who innocently, rightfully and payingly purchases a phone from a government-licensed shop.
The billionaire that fraudulently acquires thousands of acres of government land, or inherits stolen land is massagingly celebrated as an innocent purchaser or inheritor with no burden to bear, except maybe the inconsequential financial one, which sometimes can even be recovered from the exchequer if you hire a Grand Mullah or DBK grade learnt friend.
What about Section 323 where a poor “mchuruzi” is hanged for innocently “conveying” a purportedly stolen cow when the DBK level advocates, grand land surveyors and land office executors are never held accountable when an “innocent purchaser or inheritor” is unmasked?
Anyway, the only unforgivable crime under the sun is poverty; because poverty is the only crime with a lifelong and generationally binding punishment.
And because as a poor man, your main job is to make other people rich and richer through your consumption economic status, and thus confer and justify more cultural, social and political privileges unto others.
So, sons of man, avoid poverty at all costs, and keep it off your lane, in what Malcolm X used to term “by whatever means necessary”; and I add “consequences be damned”.
Political economist & community development enthusiast. [email protected]
