CHAPTER TWO

2.1     What makes people happy?

2.1.1 Basic Needs

What do people need to live? Basic human needs are really simple and has been such for millenia. According to (Denton, 1990) “The lists of needs constructed by theorists vary from short to long, from basic needs (such as food) to derived needs (such as self-actualisation, satisfaction, or love). In this morass of definitions, a few basic needs can be found that are indispensable to all of us. These are food, clothing and shelter.” I am tempted to agree that if these three needs are catered for, humans are able to survive and even thrive.

These physiological needs as they are labeled by Maslow, constitute the basis for survival. This was true for human beings thousands of years ago and most certainly it is still true today. It could be argued that a deficiency in any of these “basic” needs lead to dysfunctional human relations and sometimes undesired attempts in realization thereof. Historical narratives account of incidents where some groups or individuals have invaded the living spaces of others in order to secure their own survival.  Unfortunately closer scrutiny also reveals avarice and motives of an unsavoury nature that transcends attempts to merely secure survival. The point I wish to make at this stage is merely to suggest that physiological needs have not changed for thousands of years. In essence, people need very little to be able to survive. Food, clothing and shelter.

When I hear some of our modern orators speak, I hear refrains like: “Ubuntu[1], we need to reach out to the poor and destitute, job creation, more houses need to be built, etc.” Quite miraculously, these modern “greats” can deliver a keynote speech at a business breakfast in Johannesburg at 09h00 in the morning and then address a mass meeting in a community hall at 19h00 in Cape Town on the same day. What makes it even more astounding is that whatever it was that they said on these occasions could be heard or read by millions in 24 hours. If one should take the trouble of calculating the money spent on facilitating the sharing of these messages, adding in media coverage, transport, catering, salaries, and wages for time on task etc. it begs the question of whether talking about the problems we are facing in the country could be solved by talking about the problems facing our country.

If we acknowledge that food, clothing, and shelter are the basic needs of any human settlement, it might be expedient to consider spending more energy and resources to assist the facilitation thereof.

It would be extremely naïve to assume that philanthropists, politicians, religious leaders, and thousands of people all over the world are ignorant of the basic needs of humans. In many instances, the very essence of their professions is inextricably woven into the fabric of providing for the ‘poor’ and ‘less fortunate’.

2.2     THE POOR AND LESS FORTUNATE

Could a person who has sufficient food, proper clothes to wear and a decent house to live in be considered poor?   Could a person living in a rural area without access to television connectivity be considered less fortunate than someone living in a city? Both these labels “poverty” and “less fortunate people” are used lavishly in public spheres and create an ideological perception of ‘haves’ and “haves-not”. Two extremes of bleak and bright emerge from this discourse: the oppressed and the oppressor.

South Africa had evolved to a situation where a change in the fortunes of the oppressed became inevitable and 1994 became the benchmark for legislation to initiate “a better life for all”, the unmitigated proclamation of the African National Congress, on whose shoulders the massive task came to rest. Unfortunately, Freire’s comment that “…almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or ‘sub-oppressors.’ (Freire, 1989) Freire alludes to the phenomenon that the self-perception of the previously oppressed now operating in positions of power is,

“Impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.”  (Freire, 1989)  Emphasis mine.

This implies that often, changes in spheres of well-paid governmental positions of power will regularly usher in a new group of previously “oppressed” individuals vying to identify with their erstwhile opposite pole.

[1] Ubuntu- essential human virtues, compassion –human kindness