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3 May 1995
WHAT PRICE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SOUTH
AFRICA'S SENIOR CITIZENS.
I have listened with interest to all
the wonderful proclamations regarding all sorts of discrimination, but nowhere,
at any time,
has anyone ever mentioned discrimination against the senior
citizens ‑pray, tell me, are we non-entities? We can be retrenched,
or
leaned on to take early retirement ‑and now, believe it or not, the
pensions that many of us, particularly the middle income group, have battled so
hard to build up over
the years, including retirement annuities, which we have
scrimped and saved to try and give us a little bit of independence are to
be taxed thumpingly when we take the lump sums. I am not talking
about the civil servants who had the marvellous opportunity of buying back
pension, or the bosses earning cushy
salaries, the latter have probably formed
Trust Companies to deal with all their money anyway. I am talking about the
little guy
out there who has battled all his/her life and whose voice, it
appears, counts for nothing when he/she gets old. I, myself, was widowed
in my
thirties, and battled to bring up four children and give them a good education -
when one listens to TV or SABC radio, one
would think it was only the black
people who had had this misfortune.
We are the targets for all sorts of
attacks and robbings - most of us daren't venture out at night for fear that we
will be mugged
or our vehicles stolen. The culprits are let out of jail on any
pretext at all to perpetrate the same crimes over and over again.
Is this
the sort of "golden years' which we can look forward to? Our elderly black
brethren are even worse off, sometimes they wait
for weeks for their pensions to
come through and they have to queue up for many hours to he paid out.
Of
course the elderly politicians, both black and white, are very comfortably off
thank you very much, so why should they care. Their
pay-outs are probably
tax-free anyway.
In the business world, all the young bloods are given
decent increases, but the older employees (whom the employers know full well
will never get another job elsewhere if they are over 50) have to take what they
get and put on a brave face.
HOUSING
With regard
to the above, most thinking people realise the difficulty being encountered in
providing the above for South African's
masses - may I just mention that in 1964
my late husband was transferred to Windhoek. At that time, there were many
civil servants
coming into Windhoek and there just was not enough housing
available. The Government erected pre-fabricated houses which were called
"terrapins”. These were delivered on site in a flat condition, and a
large crane was hooked on to the roof and when the walls
were lifted and slotted
into place there were very tidy and very comfortable two and three bed-roomed
houses. These houses were
used over a period of three to four years and
certainly provided adequate homes for people until the backlog of building
caught up.
Surely something of the sort could be considered now.
I submit
that this is worth thinking about, especially once again, for the aged in the
townships.
AUDREY COOMBS (Mrs)
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