The metaphor of the lamb and the lion: understanding economic injustice - Dr Pali Lehohla

The story of the lamb and the lion bears testimony in today’s experience of water runs upstream.

The poor contribute continuously to the wealth of the rich, and are surprised by the unexplained riches of the rich against the wretchedness of the poverty in which they languish.

Water continues to run upstream instead of downstream.

Nothing ever trickles, let alone down under the trickledown economy of neoliberals.

It only floods upwards away from the poor.

When the story of the lamb and the lion was told under kerosene lamp to enthused youth with soot packed nostrils and mealie pap filled gums decades before Milton Friedman market fundamentalism of the Chicago School indeed were prophesy accomplished in their life time.

Decades later visited by crimson red gums with a dispersion of isolated lone brown teeth their fortunes of a river flowing up stream was real.

For all they saw and witnessed was after years of dirt wages on the mines all they can see are pin striped suits donned by their counterparts who affirm that indeed water flows naturally upstream.

As they should contend with their fate decades later, they have no other answer than the fact that the lion was correct all along after all – water flows naturally upstream.

The tale is about a lamb that had lost its mother to a marauding lion.

Little lamb was downstream drinking water when it got confronted by the raw upstream.

You are dirtying the water just like your mother, the ewe.

I am thirsty and I need to drink roars the lion.

The lamb answers – how can I dirty the water when I am drinking down stream from you. I am just a lamb of yesterday. The lion roars just like the ewe your mother you are doing the same – dirtying my water as the lion charges towards the innocent lamb.

This is the relationship the euphemistically referred to developing world when in reality they are constantly underdeveloped by the same lion that claims this developing world is dirtying their water.

At no point was this so classically demonstrated than in the Just Energy Transition where South Africa was told in no uncertain terms that it was dirtying the world with its coal and it should stop.

The Germans, French, Americans, and British have been drinking and dirtying the water upstream for ages, like the metaphoric lion told the lambs in the south that they are dirtying their water in the north.

So obedient lamb, South Africa stood attention and stopped and Komati was killed with other coal fired power stations being continuously decimated merely for their age.

De Ruyter the executioner was deployed for the mission.

With metaphorical lads listening attentively under kerosene lamp are adult South Africans with crimson red gums and spaced brown spikes loosely dancing in their mouths today suffering from loadshedding driven by economics of Milton Friedman cohorts who are today saying South Africa is dirtying their water despite South Africa being downstream.

Blessed is China, Malaysia and others who adopted a more measured approach to the roaring lion and told him in his face that they cannot be dirtying water when they are drinking downstream from those who dirtied years and years world without end.

Little did we know that the lion will go back and dirty the water without being reprimanded. Germany ran for coal so is America under Trump.

For how long should we stand this abuse of being told that we are dirtying the water when actually at all times we have taken water from downstream.

At no time was this more irritating than seeing the “graveyards” littering the roadside miles on end and the lion roaring that South Africa is dirtying its water through genocide and has decided to own the crosses and South Africa deserves punishment.

Blatant lies are what lions are used to against lambs and when they have run out of tricks, they drag us into their stupid gimmicks.

Time, we hold our own and respect our own and we should refuse to participate in this silly game of narcissists who have dirtied their water.

Leave them to drink it.

We should go for a different economic order, not the Milton Friedman Chicago School teaching that has caused the water to flow only upstream against all forces of gravity and the south is even blamed for being impoverished.

We cannot continue to be bullied with lies under kerosene lamp as though we are the enthused youth with soot packed nostrils and mealie pap filled gums and live for decades on, visited by crimson red gums with a dispersion of isolated lone brown teeth letting our fortunes be of a river flowing up stream.

That reality must be declared as one belonging to morons not us.

The lion ate our parents and those before them. It should neither terrorise nor eat us for water we have not dirtied, let it die of its own sins.  Africa is not Europe’s or America’s purgatory. 

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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