Habitat for Humanity is an international organisation whose aim is to house the homeless. I am a member of the Rhodes University Chapter of the organisation in Grahamstown and we are in the process of building our main project for the year, an extension for the Jabez Centre in Joza Township, a centre that assists HIV/AIDS sufferers in the area. As is expected in South Africa, there’s a massive social and economic divide between the township and the suburban, middle-class areas. Having spent time in Joza the sheer desperation in this impoverished area is deflating my white middle-class bubble at a rapid rate. With the global food crisis as the central theme for this blog, I began to wonder about the disparity between the effects of the crisis on the people living in these two areas. I asked a number of students in Grahamstown what they knew about the current food crisis and was shocked that the general response was “I know there is one, but it’s not really a problem here.”
This begs the question: When are middle- and upper-class consumers going to realise the extent of this problem and that if we don’t proactively work towards a solution, the crisis will get exponentially worse?
On the 11 of September 2001, the United States of America was the victim of a terrorist attack which became part of a greater terrorist crisis. The response to this crisis was to declare war. There was no time wasted in actively combating the crisis, to the extent that there is still a war raging because of it – 8 years later. For four years, however, the global food crisis has been getting progressively worse, forcing millions into poverty and starvation daily. To my mind, world powers have been quiet and complacent in response, leaving the most vulnerable to fend for themselves. Everyday 16 500 children die of malnutrition. This is more than 5 times the number of deaths in September 11. To make it worse, this is only children under the age of 5.
If this does not shock people into action, I seriously dont’ know what will.
