Historically, the elite have shown that they are willing to do just about anything to extend their wealth and influence. With the same enthusiasm, the average person must fight back and build up. The average person must quit taking the high road and fight back with everything he has. Yes, there are real risks that come with fighting back at the interests of the wealthy elite, but you only risk getting hurt for a little while, if you do not fight back, the damage is lifelong.
The average citizen must not acquiesce to exclusionary institutions designed by the wealthy elite and their allies. The priority must be to restore faith in the ability of the average citizen to resist the vices of the corrupt elite and reshape the social, economic and political environment, and that starts with challenging and holding the elite to account for their immoral behaviour. The ‘let bygones be bygones’ approach that has reduced average citizens to puppets of the wealthy elite; all it has done is embolden the elite and their allies to feel like they can act with impunity.
If you must, fight with all your might; fight your enemies where they are, if you must go to the lowest depths and darkest spaces to conduct the fight, do it. If the wealthy elite are willing to pull up the most diabolical stances, descend to previously unimagined depths to create the most suppressive political, economic and social structures to help them manage how society works for them, the average citizen must be prepared to match that enthusiasm to push back and build up structures that serve the interests of all of society.
After being betrayed by the liberation movements turned governments of the 20th Century, the average African citizen must realise that acquiescence is complicit. The people may not be the cause or even responsible for the situation in the independent African states, but it is still their problem. People must fight back hard to take it upon themselves to get themselves where they need to be. Proximity to power is not synonymous to wielding it; it is not enough to be acquainted to the powerful; it is time the average person stopped celebrating the achievements of the wealthy elite while not paying greater attention to the reasons why his own condition is worsening.
At the best of times, the wealthy elite and the average person have nothing in common; they are chasing different goals in how to improve society; while the wealthy are constantly looking at all possible means to reduce labour costs to maximise their personal profits, the average person thinks working hard will increase profit margins for business and translate to an increase, in real terms, in his wages and lift up all of society (trickly down economy). The wealthy view the sustained growth and expansion of the middle class as a security threat.
Let us look at how technology can be used positively to improve working and living conditions of the people and not as a tool for socio-economic exclusion by cutting off vulnerable populations from employment, financial systems, and essential services. How do we integrate the informal sector into the mainstream economy so, like formal business, it can access taxpayer funding?
Poverty does not, as history has repeatedly proven, come about because of laziness among the working class neither does it reduce because businesses are achieving larger profit margins for shareholders but rather lives of the poor improve with equitable distribution of wealth and power across society. The poor are already working hard; they are just not being paid their real labour’s worth. Pushing back at oppressive worker-employer relationships must be the goal of the working class.
Unequal power distribution translates to unfair wealth distribution and the justification for use of abstract metrics such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to define success and failure in society. Going forward, the average citizen must wrestle control of the social, economic and political spaces and public policy, and define development in broader terms so it reflects public perceptions of success.
When the average citizen demonstrates his ability to fight back, the ability to exercise initiative, the commitment to the defence of his rights, that willingness to fight will rally national governments to provide the critical resources so that they can continue to fight. The average citizen must not wait for an invitation from elites and their allies to be a part of the decision-making process that shapes the decisions that impact daily living conditions. Development relies on grassroots input to ensure that public spaces, infrastructure, and community programmes reflect the needs of the people using them, and that is essential for building thriving communities.
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