Everybody hates the rich. Even the rich hate the rich. Anti-rich sentiment has reached fever pitch, rabid heights not witnessed this side of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Observing the unprecedented antimonarchy/colonialism/super-wealthy outcry on occasion of the demise of Queen Liz was as eye-opening as it was strange, at least for this child of colonial Durban.
It’s not too difficult to imagine Marx, Lenin, Mao and Castro smirking smugly from socialist heaven at the acidic vitriol aimed at the occupants of the ill-fated Oceangate submersible. I bet they stick their tongues out at Adam Smith when Twitter descends on Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg like the Army of the Dead and ask: “Are you sure you won the Cold War?”
Look, the rich make it easy to hate them. That’s because their conduct makes them deserving of the detestation coming in their direction. And no, I’m not referring to their reluctance to curb the exponentially rising Gini Index. I’m referring to the more insidious Gentrify Index that the rich are guilty of.
Oh, come on, you know the Gentrify Index. That refers to the tendency of rich folks to reject certain resources as inferior, leaving them to us common folk to fight over and enjoy in peaceful strife. But, as soon as the economy turns for the worse, the rich come back for their discards.
New York City has been the site of the world’s most notorious example of unashamed gentrification. The result has been that folks who traditionally lived in areas such as Brooklyn, Queens and Harlem can't afford them any more as more affluent inhabitants flood in.
Yes, there are pockets of our cities in South Africa where there’s been and, in certain cases, there is gentrification under way, such as Maboneng in the Joburg CBD and, to an extent, Parkhurst further north. But this isn't the gentrification crawling up my rear side today. What's annoying me is in a different category.
I’ll tell you how it started. Around the time of the Lehman Brothers crisis of 2008 (commonly and incorrectly diagnosed as the global financial crisis) the prices at Mr Price started going up. At first I didn’t understand why my usual R79.95 shorts and R29.95 T-shirts were R20 more expensive.
Then I started seeing them; folks with Range Rover car keys paying for their Mr P clothes with platinum cards. I’m sorry, but that’s a blatant case of retail store gentrification. We may be poor but some among us studied economics 101 and we understand how the demand vs supply curve works. It leads to R399.95 pairs of denim jeans that render the meaning of “blue-collar workers” obsolete, seeing as the workers can’t afford blue. And that was back at the beginning of “the nine wasted years”, a lifetime ago.
Look, I’m not a total idiot and I appreciate that the folks I’m referring to who buy flats in Maboneng and shop at Mr Price are hardly rich. But the harsh reality of Ramanomics renders anyone who lives in a house, drives a car, can afford groceries and fuel, damn near filthy rich. These are the people who've fled their fine dining establishments and are queuing with us at Chicken Licken and KFC. If they’re not stopped, a full chicken meal at Nando’s will be R750 by 2025.
Around the turn of the 20th century there was a mass drive by the British colonial administrations across the republics to “gently discourage” the natives from land ownership and livestock farming in favour of working inside the belly of the Earth for a few shiny coins. As a result, prime cuts of meat became a rare treat in that demographic.
We can’t begrudge people their 'traditions' if their ancestors slaughtered beasts, discarded the ribs, T-bone, sirloin and whatnot in favour of the skull
Fortunately for the natives, the benevolent new livestock owners weren’t keen on consuming offal or afval (the entrails, hooves, heads, tails and so on). These undesirable parts of the beasts were usually destined for the compost heap, incinerator or pet feeds. But for the native, this “fifth quarter” became a staple.
Fast forward another century and ask the native what his idea of “traditional African food” is and the response will be ox tripe, intestines, hearts, liver, kidneys and the hooves and heads. Fair enough, we can’t begrudge people their “traditions” if their ancestors slaughtered beasts, discarded the ribs, T-bone, sirloin and whatnot in favour of the skull.
It's for this reason that I'm livid at the gentrification of mala mogodu (tripe). The other day I paid R59.95 for a kilogram — that’s 60 bloody bucks for what my elder brother referred to as “the dung meat” when we were kids. The rich need to step away from our poverty foods. We see them sharing oxtail, tripe, chicken feet and kidneys on the 'Gram and it’s nauseating. Especially since the Gautengers gooi Rajah, Knorr brown onion soup and Six Gun spice on everything.
I hope that the rich feel duly castigated and warned. Step away from our 93 octane fuel. Step away from fuel-efficient Suzuki Swifts. Before Covid-19 you were guzzling your single malt scotch. Keep it that way, and stay away from our cheap bourbons and Gordon’s gin. At this rate we’ll be forking out R200 for a bottle of Gordon’s by Jesus’s next birthday. If that happens, it won't be a euphemism to eat the rich.
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