Path Out Of Poverty

Under Apartheid, we saw the white population live and maintain a reasonably middle to high-income life, while everyone else of colour lived mostly in poverty.

What was the difference? What was it about Apartheid that allowed the white population to grow and maintain a high standard of living and wealth? While the black majority were unable to build any wealth and maintained a low standard of living?

If a person living in poverty today in Democratic South Africa can look past the racial elements of Apartheid, and understand the difference and why two groups of people lived such different lives. A person living in poverty can use this knowledge to pull themselves out of poverty and create a better life.

This is what the Socialist ANC government does not what the poor people of South Africa to know because they don't want you to succeed.

Constitutional Rights & Wealth Building

Over the last 300 years, as Democracy has formed and spread around the world poverty has reduced. The countries that gave their people the most rights, and for the longest, today are the wealthiest countries with the highest standard of living.

Apartheid is an example proving this point, where the white population had more rights than black and coloured people, all living in the same country. With these rights, the white population were able to create a better life for themselves and their children.

Today we have a Constitution that protects everybody's rights the same, but nobody has shown or taught the people living in poverty how to use them or why these rights are important.

Of all the rights, there is one that allows people to improve their lives over time. The ability to own and build wealth is provided for by private property rights. Without this right, building a better life is impossible.

Under Apartheid, whites were allowed to own private property, and people of colour did not. This single difference in rights created the poverty and inequality we see today. From owning a home to owning a business, private property rights are the tools to get out of poverty that anybody can use.

People living in poverty today need to learn how to use their Constitutional rights to build their wealth. Each generation builds wealth on the backs of the previous. Parents give their children a better life, which allows the children to build more wealth, giving the grandchildren an even better life.

Government Slavery & New Apartheid

The fewer rights people have, the more dependant people are on the government to provide for them. Socialism has been described as government slavery because under Socialism, the people have little to no rights and are 100% dependent on the state for everything.

Over the last 20 plus years, the ANC government has been working towards increasing people's dependency on the government. The more people are poor and struggling, living on social grants, the stronger government is, and the easier people are to control.

The ANC government today is pushing for changing the Constitution to remove private property rights. This would give the government the right to take peoples property without paying for it. They say they need to do this, in order to right the wrongs of Apartheid. Unfortunately, this is all a lie and is about seizing power and money under a new Apartheid style Socialist state, controlled by a single group of men.

The ANC have rigged the system in such a way as to seem like changing section 25 of the constitution and expropriation without compensation is the only way forward and is to help the poor.

The people living in poverty being sold these lies need to ask themselves why would they support giving away the rights that are their only path to a better life. By giving up our right to private property, we will be bringing back the same conditions of Apartheid just under a different government.

A path out of poverty requires more rights and less government control and dependency, not less rights and more government control and state dependency.

Collective Rights, Collective Protection

When we look at history and look at human rights, we find that they only work when they are protected equally for everyone. When there are differences in how rights are applied or enforced, we see people suffering. Using these differences powerful political elite, manipulate the structures of government for themselves, creating further inequality and abuse of power.

When my rights are protected but not yours, I am living under the safety of a promise. At any time, a few laws can be read and applied in a slightly different way, and I lose my rights and then we both are living in the same bad situation.

In countries where human rights are not protected equally. When somebody speaks out or opposes anything, the government does. The big machine of government will turn on them and destroy any that oppose them, and the people will not be able to do anything about it. This is because their rights are not protected, regardless of past promises.

When my rights and your rights are the same and protected equally, regardless of who we are. Only then are our rights protected equally and worth anything. Only through collective protection of human rights are our rights truly protected, and only then do they hold any power.

The safety of collective protection can be seen in other parts of life, history and nature. When people live together in a group, they are stronger and safer. With groups of animals, we call it a herd. In the middle-income suburbs of South Africa, we call them complexes and estates. A group of people are safer and more secure living together as a group. The safer my neighbour is, the safer I am. Protecting human rights works the same way but only when it's the entire country.

Smart Choices & Discipline

Living in poverty often means facing challenges people with money don't see or struggle to understand. Everything in life is a choice, regardless of the circumstances. The friends you associate with, the amount of alcohol drink, what you do with your time and money are all choices.

If any of us would like to permanently get out of poverty, we will be faced with choices that can drag us back and hold us captive in poverty. From toxic and destructive people to easy access to drugs and alcohol. It will take discipline, hard work and making smart choices to build a better life.

One of the most powerful words is the word "No". If you say no to a party, a Friday night trip to the tavern or unprotected sex, you are making smart choices. By saving money instead of spending it on phones and shoes, you are saying no to yourself. Every time you say no to somebody or yourself, it offers you an opportunity and gives you something in return.

These opportunities gained are presented in the form of time, money and knowledge. By not blowing your money on alcohol and drinking till the next morning, you are given in return money in the bank and the time in the form of your evening and next day, refreshed and ready for new challenges.

Getting out of poverty takes a combination of making smart choices and the discipline of saying no.

Acceptance

Getting out of poverty is not easy, but it can and has been done before. Facing your poverty and doing something about it, means accepting the position we are in, and accepting that nobody is coming to save us from our situation. We need to accept that we are the only ones that can change anything in our life.

The government is not going to help you, and nobody is going to give you your freedom. This is a difficult reality for many to accept. Until we accept this, we always going to look for a quick way out in the form of begging from the government or reckless gambling. When we do this, we give away our power and do not leverage our rights. Instead, other people leverage our desperation and poverty against us for their benefit. In short, we get used.

We all need to take responsibility for our own futures and learn to use our rights and the environment around us to lift ourselves out of poverty and build a better life.

The Everyday Hustle

Getting out of poverty is not like winning the lottery, where one day you are poor, and the next day you are not. Getting out of poverty needs to be worked on every single day, and little by little life changes for the better. Tomorrow's good choices and discipline is built on yesterdays choices, hard work and discipline.

Nobodies situation is impossible to turn around. Regardless of age or of what has happened or the current situation faced. However, every-bodies life is different, so the path out of poverty could be different, but the fundamentals are all the same.

Getting out of poverty starts with making every day count. Sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself achieves nothing. We need to take a step back and look at our situation and then make deliberate choices to change that situation.

If you don't have anywhere to sleep and would like a soft bed? Then wake up tomorrow and make that your goal and focus. Once you reach that goal, step back and re-look at your life and decide what your next goal will be.

The important part is never to let a day go by wasted waiting for a future that never comes. Rather set deliberate goals and then see how you can make them happen.

Efficient Government

One right our constitution provides for in our Democracy is the right to choose our leaders. Unfortunately, this is a right that many don't understand how to use.

When living in poverty, you don't have time to waste with corrupt governmental or lazy inefficient government employees. When trying to get out of poverty, waiting days in queues for an ID or having to bribe somebody for a permit are obstacles that slow you down and get in your way to a better life.

When you lay a charge against an abusive uncle or local gangster that keeps robbing you, you need the police to do their jobs. When you go to school or send your children to the local government school, you need the teachers to do their jobs. When you need medical assistance, you need there to be well-staffed, well-equipped clinics and hospitals with doctors and nurses that do their jobs.

One of the best choices you can make for yourself is to vote. When the politicians disappoint you with broken promises, and they will. You vote for somebody else, and you keep voting until somebody listens. This is called political accountability and it is where you and I hold the power, not the politicians. We give them their power, and we can take it away.

There are a lot of poor people in South Africa. If all the poor had to vote together for a better government, then there will be change. Not voting or voting for the same people each year keeps you poor and changes nothing.

Breaking Out

Poverty is often described as a trap, that people struggle to break out of.

Chronic systemic poverty is not the same as being broke, where being broke is about not having money right now. The trappings of poverty are woven into the fabric of daily life. That runs from generation to generation, as a cycle.

The strongest trapping that locks people into a cycle of poverty is welfare systems. If you decide to live off social grants and live off the government, stop looking for a job, and stop trying to educate yourself? You have given up the right to be in control of your future, and a chance at financial independence.

Dependency on social grants creates one of the strongest cycles of abuse. The government will promise to make poor peoples live better but never does. Doing just enough to keep the people alive and voting.

The most sinister of all the abuses the current government uses to control the poor and keep people in poverty is related to housing and Title Deeds. While the poor have no fixed assets, they also don't have access to good debt that comes with owning a home, making the poor unbankable.

Malnutrition, lack of financial literacy and lack of employable skills that comes with childhood poverty complete the cycle and trap.

Many struggles to break out of poverty because they don't recognise the trappings and thinking that comes with the way they grew up. Only by honestly looking at your life, and recognising the parts of it that hold you back can you address them. By seeing things for what they are, you can use assistance like social grants to your advantage, but stop the abuse that the government is pushing onto you and break the cycles that trap you.

Breaking out of poverty means opening your eyes to systems that control you and trap you in poverty.

Careful Of Envy

Political parties that seek to manipulate the poor, and use peoples poverty against them, will promise change by taking from the rich in some way. Using language around changing the structure of the economy and telling you the reason you are poor is because of rich business people. Being South African, this often takes on a racial component and becomes an emotive black and white topic.

These politicians are positioning themselves as being a modern-day Robin Hood. They will take from the evil rich and use it to save the poor from the abuses of the wealthy.

Using a fake Robin Hood tactic, already wealthy politicians are seeking to use you in their games. They want you to be angry with a group of people, making out like these people are the reason you are poor and then using your anger as a weapon.

When you fall for this trap, you become an expendable pawn in their games. Setting you up to do things for them in anger that you normally would not do.

Children born into a wealthy family, did they do something wrong, did they break the law? Most of them won the genetic lottery? Instead of making friends with them, learning from them, get help from them, political snakes would seek to make you hate them and see them as the enemy.

Besides using your anger to their advantage, it also acts as a useful distraction. While you are angry and focused on another group of people, you will not see or focus on their political failings.

Be careful of the green eye of envy. Robin Hood in South Africa is a greedy hungry Socialist snake.

Opportunities & Strategies

Most of life can be seen as a series of opportunities. Some people notice these opportunities and grab onto them when they see them. Others let opportunities pass by or don't notice them at all. Some people seek out and attract new opportunities to them and are open to new opportunities. Others repel opportunities and are closed to them.

We want to set up our daily life in a way that increases our access and exposure to different opportunities. An opportunity could be a bursary to study or work in an internship where you could learn some skills. An opportunity could be a friendship with somebody you can learn from and maybe lead to other opportunities.

There are many ways out of poverty, and every-bodies life is structured differently. To get out of poverty, we need a plan or a strategy that takes into account who we are, the people we live with, and where we live.

If you have a family and children, one strategy could focus on the children where we work to get out of poverty via a proxy. Working hard in a low paying job while focusing on getting the children well educated and breaking the cycles of poverty. By getting the children out, we get the family out.

Maybe you are single with no children, and life is very flexible. Staying away from parties, drugs and alcohol and networking with good healthy friendships could be a strategy for a young single person. This could be focusing on making friends with people who could lead to new opportunities or learning a skill.

Not all opportunities are good, and some should be avoided. We should all be careful to not allow our desperation to lead us to make poor choices.

Regardless if we are rich or poor, we all should have a plan for our life. Everyone involved should be part of the plan and their role. This should include the children, who should be taught about the plan from a young age and their role in the plan.

Plans should cover all aspects of our lives and be updated regularly as situations change. Strategies for getting out of poverty should look to cover daily routines and what you do with your time. Covering the activities you perform that work towards your larger long term goals.

Skills

If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you.
If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.
-- Unknown

If we had to single out a single element that is the biggest difference between poverty and a middle-income life, it would be education. People with high-value skills seem to be able to find a job in almost any economy. The more valuable a person's skills are the more responsibility they are given and higher pay.

The problem with education is that people living in poverty view education differently compared to middle-income or wealthy people. Unfortunately, one of the biggest trappings of poverty is that many poor people focus on education as being a title or a piece of paper that gets you a job. People that grow up in middle to high-income households focus on what they can learn and see the title, certificate or diploma as a secondary benefit.

Actions speak louder than words. Being able to do a job is vital. Businesses know this and today make candidates do competency tests. If you do get a job, you will not get promoted or will be worked out of the system if you cant perform.

Getting educated means spending the time at school or college focused on extracting as much knowledge and experience you can from the teachers and the environment. Cheating the system or trying to get the piece of paper that comes at the end without learning anything is only cheating yourself and setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

Any free time you have not working or at school should be focused on learning new skills. If you know somebody that has retired with some skills that could help you get a job, ask them to teach you. If you are working in a low-income job, look for ways to study part-time. If you know somebody that does something you would like to learn, ask them to help you learn. If you are serious about getting out of poverty, you should be willing to say no to watching football on a Sunday afternoon, and rather study and learn. Even it if its a final or big derby.

If you can't find people to teach and show you directly, then look for ways to do it yourself. This would mean reading. If you are living in poverty and want out, then learning to read and then reading anything and everything you can get your hands on should be a goal. Gossip magazines do not count. You need to be reading books. Fictional storybooks can help with practising reading and expose you to a wider world of ideas. Non-functional educational books help grow general knowledge and skills.

If you get access to a good, uncapped internet connection? You could spend it watching funny videos on YouTube, or you could spend it watching video tutorials and sourcing educational material. The choices you make can help get you out of poverty or help keep you trapped in poverty.

Education will set you free, and that means getting high-value information in your head.

Partnerships

Access to resources, information and opportunities are vital to any life plan. Coming from a background of poverty means access to these critical elements is greatly reduced.

All elements we need to get out of poverty are not going to come to us. Nobody is going to give it to us. We need to go out into the world and go and get it ourselves.

To start, we might not know what we need. So the best thing we can do to increase our access to vital resources and information is to look for people we can make friends with and partner with.

Some would call this networking, others will call it making friends. In simple terms, we looking for people or companies willing to help, mentor, guide and give us advice on our journey out of poverty.

Demanding help will only get doors slammed in your face. We want to be presentable, polite and grateful for any help people are willing to give us. For people to help will require them to trust us. Showing a willingness to learn and not just looking for a handout can go a long way to building trust.

Finding and building friendships and relationships where both parties benefit would be ideal. Such a situation could lead to a partnership, where it is in both parties best interest to keep the relationship going.

Building such relationships, friendships and partnerships take time. It might start small with a few short conversations as you get to know each other. Coming on too strong could scare people away. Rather, get to know them and let them get to know you before trying to move things to the next level.

Identifying and seeing opportunities is the most challenging part. Knowing you currently talking to somebody that could help change the direction of your life is not easy. It will require active and deliberately accessing every interaction and meeting and thinking through the potential and next step.

Family & Community

If you had to list all the people you trust, people you can ask for help, people that you can count on, what would that list look like? If anyone on that list asked for your help, would you help them?

Support structures are vital and can make all the difference when looking to improve one's life. The closest and strongest support structure is a family where parents, siblings, aunts and uncles help and support each other.

From paying for schooling to babysitting while others work, or go to interviews. The stronger and more supportive a family is, the easier the struggles of life are for everyone in the family.

Beyond the family unit where we live, the people we call neighbours and friends can be a source of support. Offering to help a neighbour and a neighbour offering to help you in some way could make all the difference.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born into a supportive family. Some families are destructive, and some have little to no family at all. In such instances, making strong connections with people in your community and a strong group of friends can become even more vital.

Actively working on building strong, healthy relationships should be like a second job. When we are not working or studying. We should be working on building strong relationships with our family and community. Helping to improve someone else's life could make all the difference in improving your life.

Getting out of poverty can be a team sport, and family and friends are your teammates.

Be The Best You Can Be

Somebody decides to help you, or you were able to get some form of a job, what do you do? Opportunities are what you make of them. You can grow an opportunity, making it more valuable and significant, or you can destroy it and cause it to die.

If you get a chance to study and learn, you need to throw all your time at learning and extracting information from the environment and people. This would mean studying, reading and working on being the best student you can be. You want to be the most eager to learn in class and the hardest-working outside of class. Take control of your education and do whatever it takes to get as much knowledge out of the environment, the institution and the people you possibly can.

When you get a job, regardless of what kind of job you want to be the best at it. When you arrive for work, you must be eager and fresh and ready to go. Anything that needs to be done, you want to be first in line ready to pick up a spade, box, scrubbing brush, pen or computer keyboard. If a hole needs digging, you offer to do it. If data capture needs capturing, you offer to do the typing. Even if everybody else is sitting drinking tea watching you do the work, it does not matter, do it with a smile and do it well.

If you show you are hungry to learn and are consistently reliable, managers, teachers, and business owners will notice. When assigning new shifts for work, you will be the first person they think of. Teachers and business owners will be willing to put more time and effort into your well-being. This is because they see potential, and they trust you not to waste their time and money.

Once you have shown people they can trust you. Ask questions of the people in charge, try and learn anything you can from every situation you find yourself in. Approach teachers about learning more advanced material. Ask business owners what it takes to build a business and what you should be doing to be like them one day.

By maximizing every opportunity, and always striving to be the best possible version of yourself, you will start to attract more opportunities. That first job or learning opportunity will lead to something else, leading to more opportunities.

The result of you always trying to be the best you can be will lead to you learning more, getting paid more and achieving more.

Reward Those That Help

When somebody is willing to give you an opportunity or give up some of their time to teach you and help you want should you do?

Besides learning from every moment, you also want to reward them by giving them something in return. You don't have money to give them. So you give them respect, kindness and most importantly, reward them by being trustworthy.

That means showing up on time, and when they ask you to do something for them, you do it exactly as they asked. You want to be dependable and trustworthy. You don't want them to feel like they wasting their time with you.

Resiliency

Life never happens as we planned. Life is messy, and things often go wrong. What we do when things go wrong will be the difference between success and failure.

Highly successful people will all tell you the difference between success and failure is about not giving up. You only fail at something once you give up.

As you execute on your plans for getting out of poverty. Adapting to a changing environment, and never giving up, is vital for success.

This means that when life knocks you down, you need to take a moment to think about what you can learn from the experience. Then get up, dust yourself off and try again.

Debt

Debt can be a powerful tool for getting out of poverty, but it can also be the thing that sinks you deeper into poverty. Debt can tie you down like a weight that keeps you from being successful and rising from your situation.

People that grow up in middle-income or wealthy households will often be taught some financial literacy and the basics of working with debt. This financial education around debt is often missing from poorer households. Because of this missing education, access to debt is often more of a curse to the poor than a resource.

Debt is not free money, regardless of how much you want it to be. We will often lie to ourselves, telling us we need something and debt makes it easy to achieve. All debt needs to be paid back. If you don't pay it back, bad things happen to you that will make your life more difficult. If you mess up paying back any debt just once, your ability to access debt in future will be far more difficult, often impossible.

In simple terms, there is good debt and bad debt. Robert Kiyosaki the author of the book "Rick Dad Poor Dad", describes good debt as something that puts money in your pocket, and bad debt or liability as something that takes money out of your pocket.

For somebody living in poverty, good debt is when the money is used for something useful and improves your ability to get out of poverty.

Buying a good but not expensive phone on contract, that you then use to find a job or research schools is an example of good debt. Buying a high-end phone on contract and then using it to arrange parties and using all your data to watch funny videos on YouTube is an example of bad debt.

Buying a decent set of shoes and clothes using a store account that you pay off is debt. If you look after these clothes and use them for job interviews it could be viewed as good debt. If you use it to look good around your friends and go out partying its bad debt.

The type of debt, the amount, the interest rates, and what you use debt for all come into play. All debt should be focused on getting out of poverty for things like education or starting a business.

When living in poverty a few simple rules about debt can make a big difference. Here we list just a few we think are important. You should try and think of your own that are relevant to your life.

• If you know you can't afford to pay it back, don't do it.
• Avoid high-interest rates, it's never worth it.
• Avoid payday loans, they are often a debt trap forcing you into living on debt.
• When starting out, try to keep your debt to one at a time, having multiple debts to pay is the best way to get into trouble.
• Never use debt for survival items like food or transport money, if you can't afford to buy food you will never afford to pay back the debt.
• Never say yes to debt that comes to you in the form of a salesperson trying to sell you something.
• All debt should be something you choose and go out to find after thinking about it as part of your plan.
• Explore other options first to get what you need, debt should be a last resort.
• Never take out debt that will be used by somebody else, with the only exception being your children's education.

Resource & Asset Accumulation

Coming from a background of poverty means starting life with very little. To be successful in life, you don't need a big fancy house or luxury car, but you will need access to some critical resources.

Clothing, access to electricity, running water, a dry comfortable and safe place to sleep are all forms of resources and assets. Schooling and job hunting, in the modern age, means access to the Internet and computers. The ultimate resource is an education and is something nobody can take away from you because it safely lives inside your head.

When moving out of poverty, many problems around access to resources will need to be solved. Sometimes you will need to solve the same problem repeatedly, sometimes you can purchase a resource once and use it going forward.

The good news is that the Constitution and right to own private property means you can slowly, over time build up resources and assets you own that are yours.

Seeing the resources around you, and what's important, and what is not important, is the most difficult part. All money is both a resource and an asset. When you spend money you are converting your money from an asset into a resource. Transferring the value of the money into something else.

A bank account is a resource that can be used for storing and paying money. Yes, there will be bank charges, and when you are poor and struggling those bank charges really hurt. That does not mean you should not have a bank account. Rather have a bank account with no money in it now, than no bank account at all. When an opportunity comes your way that requires a bank account, you want to already have things in place that makes seizing that opportunity as simple and easy as possible.

Access to a smart person that you can learn from is a resource. Sometimes you will need to pay money to gain access to this resource in the form of education. Sometimes you can gain access to these sorts of resources for free by making friends with the right kind of people.

Your plan for getting out of poverty needs to include solving problems and building up access to or owning resources. Resources and assets that you can then leverage to improve your life and move you out of poverty.

Financial Independence

Financial independence does not mean you are wealthy, and it does not necessarily mean not needing to work. In the context of poverty, financial independence means paying your own way and not needing others for your own survival. Leveraging government grants in the beginning in ways that help move you out of poverty is smart, but the long term goal should be to survive without any help and assistance, including government assistance.

When you get to this point in your life, you should close your eyes, picture where you have come from and where you are now and feel proud of what you have achieved. Then we need to picture where we want to go next.

Financial independence does not necessarily mean living in a different place or having more things than before. You could still be living with poverty all around you in a shack and be financially independent.

Financial independence is about being in control of your life and is a significant step to getting out of poverty. Once you reach this point, doors will open up for you that were not available to you before, because you can choose the direction and priorities of your life.

When are we in control of our life? When we don't need to stand in long queues to collect government grants, because we have a job. When we don't need to stand in long queues when we are sick, because we can afford to pay for medical aid.

Financial independence puts us in charge of our own lives and our own future. It gives us options, new opportunities and choices.

Wealth Building

Once we reach financial independence and are standing on our own feet, our focus should shift to wealth building. Wealth building is not something only the rich do. It is something we can all do regardless of our situation.

Building wealth is about expanding your financial base by building up assets.

Wealth building can take many forms with the simplest being savings in a bank account. Investments and retirement annuities that save for retirement is another.

Building wealth requires financial discipline and saying no to wasting money on things you don't need. Wealth building is about saving up money and not using it, even during the hard times.

In the beginning, we should focus on savings and try not to increase monthly expenses with contracts and expensive rent. We should live as small and as cheap as possible. Money in our pocket buys us options and access to opportunities that we can't access without a little money when that crucial opportunity passes by you.

As much as a car could make our lives easier, unless we going to use it to earn money, we should probably avoid buying one. A car is not an asset, but reliable transport is a resource, and we should focus on solving these problems in the cheapest possible way for as long as possible.

Once we have a decent foundation of savings, have a good solid job, and have grown our skills, we can consider taking the step to buying a large fixed asset like a house.

Buying a house is a major step that should be considered carefully and for the right reasons. You could buy a house that you rent out and somebody else pays the bond for you. Or you could look to buy a house in a safe area closer to work or family.

A house is a long term investment that once paid off gives us a large solid asset that we can then use to grow our future.

Summary

Poverty is a complex topic, and we wanted to avoid presenting a simplified top ten list of things to do that is very common and lacks depth.

Below is a simple summary that should be combined with the above context as without the detail and context the following has little meaning.

1. Avoid government slavery, always vote and choose based on current performance. What happened 30 years ago is irrelevant today. You need the government to work for you now.
2. Avoid government slavery, don't let politicians lie to you and use you in their games. Government serves the people, not the other way round.
3. Understand your rights and the constitution, private property rights, free speech and the right to choose your path in life is your way out of poverty, learn how to use them.
4. Understand your rights and the constitution, don't let greedy politicians disempower you and take rights away from you, you will need them all on your way out of poverty.
5. Make good choices, don't smoke, do drugs or drink alcohol they cost money, affect your brain and health and suck up your time, leading to other destructive behaviour.
6. Make good choices, avoid having children very young. Having children and how many children should be a choice, not an accident.
7. Make good choices, if you do have young children make sure that children get plenty of food in their first 1000 days of life when brain growth is its fastest.
8. Make good choices, if the mother is breastfeeding, make sure she never goes hungry. Fathers should eat last or be the first to go hungry.
9. Make good choices, avoid toxic people even if they are family. Don't let other peoples bad choices become your future.
10. Make good choices, if you live near a tavern or shebeen, move. If you live in a violent gangster ridden area, move. Don't let your environment control your life and choose your future.
11. Make good choices, be the best you can be at everything you do. Nobody is going to help a lazy complainer, you need to show how hunger you are to change your life.
12. Have a plan, you should know where you are going, and what needs to be done.
13. Have a plan, every day is an opportunity to work on your goals. Make sure you don't waste a single day.
14. Have a plan, avoid destructive time-wasting habits that don't achieve anything. Sitting around watching TV all day achieves nothing except suck up your time.
15. Have a plan, identify the things you need and are missing. Work out how to get them or do without them.
16. Have a plan, you should work towards getting off of social grants and make it part of your plan for when that money is no longer coming in, and you are standing on your own two feet.
17. Learn and develop skills, study and stay in school as long as you can, and if possible try and finish.
18. Learn and develop skills, read as much as you can. Find books the best you can and read them.
19. Learn and develop skills, and identify people you can learn from and then kindly ask them to teach you.
20. Learn and develop skills, school should never end. Look to grow your skills and learn new things every day for the rest of your life.
21. Build a team, family and friends working together and supporting each other will be easier than trying to do it all on your own.
22. Build a team, find people you think could help you and then try and partner up with them. If you can help them and they can help you, then everybody wins.
23. Build a community, get to know the people that live around you. Try to build strong connections with them.
24. Learn how money works, don't waste money on things that don't achieve or do anything for you. Make every cent count.
25. Learn how money works, debt can destroy you or help you on your way. Learn how to use debt and when to use it.
26. Learn how money works, if you are unsure if the debt is a good idea, rather go without it and find other ways.
27. Learn how money works, avoid get rich quick schemes, gambling and throwing money at the lottery. It is the best way to waste money.
28. Learn how money works, as you earn more try and save more, rather than spend more.
29. Learn how money works, the more you have, the easier it is to lose it. You want your money to work for you, not control you.
30. Never give up, you need to be ready for things to go wrong and people to let you down.
31. Never give up, adapting to change is vital. When things change you must change too.
32. Never give up.

Rights & Effort

The human rights that we won with the formation of our Democracy and the creation of the Constitution are vital to getting out of poverty.

When you have the right to private property, the freedom of association and the right to education. Then through these rights, access to information and knowledge. Then and only then what you do matters and can change your life. The harder you work, the more effort you put in and the choices you make have an impact on improving your life.

Without these rights, you are powerless and are dependent on the government giving you these things. No matter how hard you work, nothing changes and what you do makes no difference because you are not in control of your life.

The phrase you can be anyone you want to be through hard work is only relevant and possible by leveraging our rights.

Constitutional Rights Roundup

If you are doing anything described here in some way, you are leveraging and using human and constitutional rights to uplift yourself and improve your life.

The below is a summary and recap that highlights how your rights work. How it all fits together, and the importance of your rights.

This website would not be possible without the following rights. Getting out of poverty would not be possible without the following rights. Our children would have no future without the following rights.

Right To Life: Nobody can take your life away from you and not face consequences. Under Socialism, if the government does not like you for any reason, they can arrest and put you to death. Under a Democracy, your life is your own, and you are allowed to protect yourself and your life.

Right To Equality: Everyone under the law is treated equally and has the same rights. Under a Socialist government, the leaders in the government are not accountable to the same laws that the general public are required to comply with. Under Democracy, your rights and the laws that protect those rights are the same for everybody. Regardless of your position in society or government.

Right To Vote And Choose A Government: Everyone has an equal right to participate in government and vote for the leaders that run our country. Under Socialism, there is only one political party and the leaders of that party are chosen internally, and the people have no say. Under a Democracy, you have the right to vote, and the people have the final say about who is in government.

Right To Own Private Property: Everyone has an equal right to own private property. Under Apartheid, only whites were able to own property creating massive amounts of inequality and poverty. Under Socialism, the government controls and owns everything and any private property is not protected and can be taken away at any time. Under a Democracy, all private property rights are protected, and your property cannot be taken away from you.

Freedom Of Association: Everyone is free to make friends with or join any club or association they want. Under Apartheid, people were forced to live together grouped by race. Under Socialism, the government can force you to live and work where they want you to, and force you to belong to a union or association and prevent you from associating with people they see as their enemy. Under a Democracy, nobody can be forced to belong to a club, association, church or union if they don't want to and you can speak with and associate with anyone you choose.

Freedom Of Speech: Everyone is allowed to have an opinion and share that opinion. Under a Socialist government, nobody is allowed to speak out against the government with censorship and arrests of journalists very common. Under a Democracy, you are free to speak out against anything the government is doing without fear of arrest or prosecution for having your views, and you can share information freely.

Freedom Of Movement: Everyone is free to move, live and work where they want. Under Apartheid, people had to live where the government put them. Under Socialism, peoples movements and where they live are controlled and often tracked. Under a Democracy, you are free to live and move around in a country as you see fit and choose in your life.

Right To Education: Everyone has the right to learn and improve their minds and acquire skills. Many countries don't allow women to be educated. Under Apartheid, the education system that was forced on to the non-white population was strictly controlled and only what the government wanted the people to learn. Under Socialism, the government controls all forms of education, and the flow of information is strictly controlled. Under a Democracy, you are free to improve your life in any way you see fit, and your education is in your hands. Nobody can stop you from learning or tell you what you can or can't learn.

Right To Privacy: Everyone has the right to privacy and the dignity that comes with privacy. Under Apartheid, non-whites could be searched at any time for no reason. Under Socialism, the government is allowed to intercept any and all your communication, some forcing their citizens to install surveillance software on their phones and computers. Under a Democracy, nobody is allowed to invade your privacy, expose your private information and use it against you, giving you the freedom to make choices about your life without worrying about the government.

Right To Work: Everyone has the right to work in a job and chosen career path. Under Apartheid, non-whites were not allowed to do certain jobs and were excluded from parts of the economy. Under Socialism, the government can pick and choose how many jobs and who will do them. Under a Democracy, people are in control of their careers and can sell their skills as they see fit, and at the price that best works for them. With no limitations on what you do and who for.

Choice & Power

Fundamentally a Democracy and human rights are about choice. Under Socialism, you are told what to do, and there is no protection from government abuse. With a Democracy, you have the right to choose what to do, and your choices are protected provided your choices do not infringe and negatively affect another person's rights.

The choices we all make determine our lives and our future. We can sit back and hope for a better life comes to us, or we can work hard and choose to make a better life for ourselves.

Rights can be given, and rights can be taken away. The more rights the people of a country has, the less power government has. The best Democracies give more power to the people, and the people use it to improve their lives. Socialism is the opposite where power is moved away from the people and concentrated in government and politicians.

If your rights are important to you, you should fight to keep them and not let politicians take your rights away from you.

The choice and future are yours.