Are we focusing on the root causes?

The Muslim community around the world is among the most generous and most committed to relief. After a disaster there is not lip service but real investment in those affected. Floods, fire, hunger, earthquake, war — people give from whatever is within their means.

We often overlook the proportionality of that giving. The time and money contributed by middle-income and less affluent households may be smaller in rand terms than that of wealthy donors, but the effort, and the share of earnings, is frequently greater.

But are we working on preventing the crises?

We are blessed with exceptional organisational skill, speed and effectiveness in relief. How much do we spend on prevention?

Take alcohol abuse, which is directly linked to gender-based violence, road deaths, cycles of poverty, gambling, ill health and sexually transmitted infections. How much effort, money and skill have we invested over the last thirty years in the legislation, the by-laws and the research around alcohol?

We are not alone in this

The millions of members of the Shembe Church, and many other groups, do not consume alcohol and hold similar concerns about alcohol abuse in South Africa. We could not only influence such an effort — we could help lead it.

There are already civil society organisations, such as the DG Murray Trust, that have researched and engaged on alcohol harm reduction, and that we could work with.

It is an unspoken reality that alcohol is an issue in Muslim communities too — indirectly, through gang violence, assaults and what happens at schools, and directly among Muslims, and especially among young people who have developed alcohol addictions.

Stop bandaging the wound

Until we invest in addressing root causes, we will keep putting a bandage on the wound, patching up the abused wife and child, or handing over a food parcel — rather than getting people out of those situations.

What is needed is a different approach to spending our increasingly limited resources on our national social problems.

For every R100 and every 100 hours we spend dealing with disasters, we need to spend R5 and five hours on making sure they go away.

That means shifting our conversations, our investments and our minds — away from the immediate, less complex work of doing, which is sometimes more about feeling good, and towards the longer-term, intellectual, harder work of changing minds and changing rules, which has deeper and more lasting impact.

Let us start having these conversations — among our friends, our Ulema, academics, medics, the legal fraternity, professionals, business people and employees, our youth, and everyone.

Let’s invest 5% in solving problems.

Related

Food Security and Climate Change · Alcohol Harm Reduction — What Iceland Did · South Africa’s Growing Gambling Problem

Shared by the South African Muslim Network (SAMNET) in the interest of starting new conversations and new approaches to social relief and support.