Too often society unwittingly condemns the victims of abject poverty, mainly because the spirit of ubuntu has become a thing of the past for many South African households.
Poverty is a terrible thing that drives people into petty crime just to put food in their stomachs.
As the saying goes, isisu asikweletwa (a stomach is not credit-worthy).
Yet our first reaction is corporal punishment or lethal vigilantism, delivered before the facts are established.
This response has cost us the lives of many good boys who were denied opportunities.
Some were orphaned. Others fled domestic abuse and chose the streets over harm at home.
Those who remain in villages and are caught breaking into houses searching for food are instantly condemned.
Beating hunger victims is a deviation from ubuntu as black communities lived it in past generations.
Then, there were no hungry boys or girls roaming the streets.
It was not only wealthy families that embraced such children and adopted them as their own.
They were integrated, treated as family, and given domestic duties — tilling land, milking cows, herding.
Middle-class families sent some to school.
The proof is in generations from the 1950s to the 1970s who became lawyers, doctors, police officers, and teachers after being rescued from poverty by other families.
Today, that culture is almost non-existent. We quickly label poverty-stricken people as thieves.
We have hardened our hearts. We have adopted a culture of competing for wealth, with younger generations copying the desire for accumulation and status without sweat.
Let us not beat up the downtrodden. If we catch someone, let us probe with concern.
Let us look into their background, their schooling, and use our privilege and knowledge to guide them or refer them to places established to cater for their plight.
It pains me when I see perpetrators of petty crime paraded on social media and brutally assaulted by grown men.
SA, a deeply unequal society, has failed to turn the spoils and opportunities of democracy into building a better society.
Condemnation has become the order of the day. Even in a heavily religious country, those values are blatantly ignored.
It’s not too late to return to our roots of caring, adoption, and extending a hand to those who cannot help themselves, especially those with the potential to change.
Your attitude can turn them into unwilling killers for hire. Let us build a a caring society. — Sizwe Kupelo writes in his personal capacity