We Need More Tables: Navigating privilege in the face of poverty

By Norma Young

Poverty isn't always a jumble of appalling statistics. Sometimes there are names, faces and stories to the numbers. It's a cousin who's finished high school but doesn't have enough money to job hunt. It's a colleague whose hand to mouth living still only gets her through half the month because her salary is just not enough. It's a grandfather who worked for decades and got a retirement package so paltry he can't pay his monthly bills.
When people you know and love are behind the data of impoverishment, it can be hard to determine how to help. It can be even harder to settle on how much to help without compromising on your own quality of life.
In We Need More Tables, Norma Young provides guidance on how to find a balance between alleviating poverty and yet maintaining a measure of the privilege one may have been born with. By exploring assumptions such as the myth of hard work and the fallacy of meritocracy, as well as historical methodologies of philanthropy in Africa, and suggesting the practice of impactful altruism, such as paying a living wage, building a solidarity economy or choosing regenerative investing, she shares an outline of how those with privilege can play a role in social justice.
Drawing on indigenous knowledge – fables, proverbs and learnings from African academics – We Need More Tables presents a framework of what is required to bring more of our communities to participate at the tables where decisions are made.
Norma Young's insightful book provides us with realistic and practical ways of moving towards eradicating poverty in South Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: May 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990931628

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

We sat silently in the kitchen. Each of us processing the ‘why’s unique to our frames of reference. Why would such a young girl die so suddenly? Why should a mother have to bury her child? Why did this happen in a classroom that had earlier been just another four-walled space?

I’d come home from school that afternoon and tearfully narrated the horrific story of a girl in Class One who’d had to be airlifted away after collapsing. She’d had an aneurysm and by the time the helicopter arrived at the hospital, there was no longer a need to take her to the emergency ward.

While the mundane ordinariness of a weekday afternoon continued outside, a teenager, a grandmother who’d experienced the anguish of losing a child herself, and a primary schoolteacher attempted to make sense of the senseless. We had questions but no answers; and no idea of where to even begin to make this tragedy fathomable.

In Standard Five at the time, the concern that consumed my final and first thoughts every day was the anxiety of starting high school soon. Even though the division was a mere patch of grass and a small pathway, primary school was a familiar sanctuary and the world on the other side of it was foreign.

Now, alongside the confusion of how the locker-system worked (why can’t I just leave my books and bags in the classroom?), and trying to make sense of the bizarre expectation that we have to go to particular rooms for specific lessons (why don’t teachers come to us like they always have?), I found myself grappling with existential questions that I was scared to ask out loud.

Seeing my mum and gran left uncharacteristically speechless made me wonder if they too were whispering the queries inside their brains.

I tried to give what context or clarity I could, when they were able to begin talking and asking. But my knowledge was limited only to the little girl’s name and fragments of her biography such as the fact that she was an only child. Over the following days I was able to give small updates to my family as the school both tried to protect us while helping us deal with her death.

One evening a few days later my gran asked me to look for an envelope. Dutifully, I found and delivered one. On the kitchen table there was R70. I was instructed to put the money inside the envelope and then give it to my teacher to give to the little girl’s family.

Both my mum and gran were tearful when issuing this directive.

Their instruction left me unsettled.

I was sad too, but how was I going to explain the envelope to my teacher? Though I was 12 years old, I had never yet been to a funeral, but I had overheard enough conversations about imali yesoso and isipheko.

I knew that when my parents went to offer condolences to a bereaved family, it was never just through their presence; but also with some tangible support. Now, even though I myself could not even recall the little girl’s face clearly, I was going to have to find a way to convey to my white teacher that my black family was making a contribution to imali yesoso or the ‘saucer of money’ for the white family of the little girl. A girl that they had never met; a family whose surname they didn’t even know until a few days earlier.

Arriving at school that morning, the matter of when and how to hand over the envelope consumed my thoughts all through assembly. I knew I had to do it but had no strategy for a suitable execution that wouldn’t leave me trying to explain black customs.

Courage to do what needed to be done was fuelled by sudden gratitude that it was a discreet envelope of money and not a sack of potatoes or bucket of scones I was carrying. There had been enough times when I had been sent to a neighbour’s house the Friday before a funeral, lugging a contribution for the family that could range from vegetables to cooldrinks and, once, even a pack of frozen chicken pieces.

This relief spurred me to action and at first break I found my teacher and handed over my family’s gift and relayed a message of condolence. As soon as the envelope was in her hand, I dashed off to avoid having to answer any further questions.

Later that day when I got home I confirmed that I had indeed done as I’d been told. Upon hearing this, my gran shook her head, smiled forlornly and prayed for the little girl’s soul to rest in peace. We all echoed a response of wishing the same for her.

Over the next few weeks the school gave intermittent updates from the bereaved family which I in turn passed on to my family.

A few months later, I could identify my locker without first needing to count from the one closest to the corridor door.

High school had started and with that the existential questions faded in the glare of more pressing concerns, like what to wear for the next civvies day.

Life returned to a semblance of normality, but decades later the story of the envelope continues to shape my life and thoughts about living and being in community with others.

As a teenager, desperate to not stand out in any way, bringing a distinctly black practice into a predominantly white environment left me embarrassed. I was mortified that my family had contributed only R70, thinking that perhaps if it had been a larger sum it might have seemed more business­like, and perhaps even a mere formality.

Instead, the small amount conveyed a caring and compassion that is not common amongst strangers. I knew the money had been a major sacrifice and had overheard talk that if they had had more, my parents would have given more.

But I worried that their concern would come across as weird – who gives money to a family they don’t know? And who gives such a small sum to a family they don’t know?

Today, I can answer these questions with pride instead of shame: my family does!

My family has not just taught me about kindness; they have demonstrated it to me. And have left a legacy that I have tried to honour.

Being taught that when I see a need and have the means to alleviate or eliminate that lack, I should do so, has been a defining life lesson.

There are times when it’s been instinctive; and other times when I’ve had to call an internal stakeholders meeting to debate my personal expenses and determine which ones can be compromised in order to help another person. My giving hasn’t always been joyful; there’ve been occasions when it was motivated by guilt or by self-righteousness or duty.

Over the past few years, however, I’ve found myself increasingly inclined to give less despite the fact that my earnings have increased. In some ways, it was easier to be benevolent when I was younger and had less money.

But salary by salary, a new behaviour shrewdly crept into my heart and mind.

From small justifications that ‘I’ll help next time’, I soon found myself with a definitive policy decision of: ‘each to their own’.

As my income grew, so too did my self-indulgence.

And yet, the story of the envelope kept popping up in my memories. I started wondering what it would like look to accommodate some envelopes into my budgeting. And what it would look like to enjoy my life – its privileges and opportunities, while also meeting some of the pressing needs around me.

Spurred by a desire to make a difference, I once even quit a job I loved to work for a non-profit organisation. Noble though they were, my intentions were more about the narrative of making a selfless and virtuous move. Taking a pay cut attributed to working for charity seemed honourable. I could have stayed in my job and decreased my monthly expenditure to free up more money to give to charity, but that didn’t have quite the right righteous tone to it. By the time that one year was up, I was very ready to go back to the corporate sector!

After this magnanimous experiment gone wrong, I took a break from altruistic endeavours, but earning a corporate salary was no longer as sweet.

For an average of eight hours a day, I’d been exposed to all the ways poverty colours life. And I could no longer look at my life of eating out at restaurants, buying new clothing on a whim or travelling overseas as having the old rosy sheen.

Still, I didn’t know how to reconcile the privileges I enjoyed with a desire to alleviate poverty. Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to navigate through this conundrum; and this book is a framework to guide me on orientating towards finding a tenuous balance.

I know myself well enough to know that even when I want to do good, I derail these intentions with self-serving actions.

When I have decided on particular choices or personal policies, I can also adeptly talk myself out of them for unique and once-off concessions. These however never end up being as rare as I think they will be. Left to my own thoughts and behaviours, I will invariably choose ‘me’ over ‘we’, my luxuries over someone else’s necessities, and a tunnel-visioned race towards success in which I can’t slow down or stop to help anyone who’s fallen.

But I don’t want this to be my legacy.

I want to continue filling envelopes; filling them with small and large amounts, regularly and in response to emergencies; for people I know and for strangers.

It’s what I’ve been taught by my family; by my school which has the line Service before self in its motto, and by my Christian faith which consistently encourages the filling and giving of envelopes to the poor, hungry, widowed, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, homeless, orphaned, sickly, needy.

Despite all this, however, I’ve found plenty of reasons not to give.

I’ve held on to unjust thinking around my privilege and others’ poverty, subscribing to beliefs such as that hard work is the sole key to success. This perspective on my life has prompted me to want to live lavishly because I believed I’d earned and therefore deserved everything I have. Needing to maintain a particular standard of living then resulted in excessive hoarding.

At the same time, though, I’ve wanted to make a difference; wanted to play my part; wanted to love my neighbour as I love myself.

It just hasn’t been easy to follow through.

If you’ve lived in this duplicity too, then join me in learning how to navigate privilege in the face of the poverty we see all around.

In researching how to do and be better, I’ve realised that I need to put three stakes in the ground. These are to guide thoughts, decisions and actions in the following ways:

Thinking Justly

Living Simply

Giving Generously

Thinking Justly is the first section of the book. It’s an addressing and correction of some of the flawed understandings around privilege and poverty. Starting here is critical because how we comprehend the world informs how we manoeuvre through it. Assessing the circumstances that result in either privilege or poverty is important; as is determining the interventions required to redress privilege and lessen poverty.

Living Simply follows on from Thinking Justly. It’s premised on the acceptance that we cannot hold on to all our privilege and wealth while trying to help the poor. We ourselves should not become poor in efforts to assist our neighbours, but we certainly cannot keep and grow all our riches and still be good neighbours to those living in poverty.

Giving Generously is facilitated by a simpler lifestyle where self-aggrandisement isn’t the ultimate goal of work or life. Instead, by being satisfied with enough, more is freed up to help others to also get enough of the basics needed for a decent standard of living.

For many in South Africa there is a need for enough food to stay alive; enough education to pursue gainful employment; enough water and electricity for sanitary living conditions.

Each section of this book attempts to respond to the question of ‘how’. Knowing that just thinking is required doesn’t necessarily lead to just thinking. Consequently, for each section there are suggestions of how to live out each idea practically.

Life stages and needs differ so my hope is that every reader will assess what’s viable for them. No one individual can follow all the steps outlined in the sections on living simply and giving generously.

Besides the fact that they’d have no money left over to meet their own basic needs, the suggestions won’t all be applicable. Some recommendations are for entrepreneurs; others are relevant to those with disposable income while others are best suited to personalities that are not risk averse. You must discern what’s relevant for you.

This model of Thinking Justly, Living Simply and Giving Generously, is even more of an imperative for me as a black South African.

When we speak of the country’s deplorable poverty statistics, the faces behind the numbers are primarily of my people. They are fellow blacks, many of whom, through no choice of their own, were born into a country that deployed strategies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. These strategies were not just to subjugate blacks but also to limit opportunities for self-determination.

It was never the plan to have black people sit at the tables of leadership. In the room, yes; but only to serve and then clean up.

If invited into the room, it was never the plan to have black people own the tables at which they were seated. Chop the wood and make the tables, yes; but possession was not in the blueprint.

It was never the plan for every black person to have a table for them and their loved ones. Allow a few select blacks to have their own, yes. But these numbers needed to be contained and kept very low so that greater numbers could be left sitting and