EATING THE LOUSE AND ITS LARVA! THE INDIGNITY OF POVERTY AS EMBEDDED WITHIN SELECTED AFRICAN AND OLD TESTAMENT PROVERBS
Abstract
Go hloka le pudi ya leleme le letala, ie, to lack even a green-tongued goat, is an African idiom which reveals extreme poverty for one who lacks such a goat. Such a person “eats a louse and uses its larva as relish!” From the wisdom literature of African peoples, it becomes evident that even in pre-colonial Africa, poverty stared some in the eye. Similarly, some Old Testament scholars argue for a popular setting of the Book of Proverbs. Using the Marikana incident as a hermeneutical lens to show the indignity of poverty, I argue in this article that to be poor, is to be deprived of human dignity. Selected Northern Sotho/Pedi and Old Testament proverbs will also be used to show the indignity of living in poverty. doi: 10.7833/111-1-27Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this Journal.
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