#OnlyHuman

WHAT A foul time the last few weeks have been, full of incidents and reports that a dispassionate observer from an alien planet might regard as evidence of humankind’s creeping insanity: the dreadful attack in Rhodes Park, here at home; Bombings called worst of Iraq war; the merciless attack on Kunduz hospital that killed 22 Médecins Sans Frontières staff, and which MSF claims was purposeful; and the refugee crisis taking the death toll in the Mediterranean to over 3 000 …

So, it was a tremendous relief to read George Monbiot’s latest column in the Guardian. Monbiot takes a look at published and to-be-published research that has been trickling through from the social sciences in the last decade or so, research which shows that, by and large, humans are not the nasty pieces of works we’re inclined to think them:

“A study by the Common Cause Foundation, due to be published next month, reveals two transformative findings. The first is that a large majority of the 1 000 people they surveyed – 74% – identifies more strongly with unselfish values than with selfish values. This means that they are more interested in helpfulness, honesty, forgiveness and justice than in money, fame, status and power. The second is that a similar majority – 78% – believes others to be more selfish than they really are.”

One of the books on my bedside table to be read is, by chance, Donald Pfaff’s The Altruistic Brain: How we are naturally good (Oxford University Press, 2015), which I bought because of a review that said the book provides a “compilation of evidence from primary neuroscience research in favour of such a universal altruistic predisposition as a central aspect of human nature…”

I shall enjoy reading all that evidence. I hope it will make me more hopeful.

Because altruism is about to become very, very necessary. We are living through a tremendous, crushing time of heat in the summer rainfall areas, but little rain. (I’ve measured a paltry 5.5mm in October so far, for which the 20th century average was 72mm.) With an unforgiving El Niño in play, we’re expected to have nigh on 70% less rain than usual in the next three months, pretty much across the subcontinent. Look at it, really look! Who is going to bear the brunt of this El Niño? Oh Africa, my Africa!

GRAPH: Rainfall from November 2015 to January 2016

Source: WeatherSA

I was in Swaziland recently, where women who live by growing vegetables showed me shrivelled tomato plants and complained that the sun and wind were so harsh, the soil dried and cracked just hours after watering. Zimbabwe faces serious hunger; last year was bad for the country, and this year the rains are not coming, just at the time those little seedlings should be emerging.

Right across the band that includes southern Angola and Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, southern Zimbabwe, western, northern and central South Africa, southern Mozambique – us and all our neighbours – November into January is predicted to be very dry. And when we can expect the drought to be punctuated by the kind of heavy, flooding storms that do a great deal of damage to dried-out soil.

White maize prices are already up 60% since last year, and yellow maize 44%, and the harvest, already considerably diminished last year, is expected to be smaller still. This, of course, impacts not just on those households which use white maize as a staple, but also on animal feed.

There is already serious hunger within our own poor communities – hunger that I’ve been seeing with my own two eyes over recent weeks as I visit shack settlements along the West Rand. There’s hunger in neighbouring countries. And it is going to get much, much worse.

Are you ready to be altruistic, to display that baked-in empathy that primatologist Frans de Waal says humans have, in his wonderful book, The Bonobo and The Atheist? Are you ready to do more than smear marge and peanut butter on a few sandwiches to take to the orphanage on Mandela Day? (“Ag shame, those sweeeet little kids, they were so happy to get a sarmie, you know?”)

I’m not asking anyone to donate food, I’m suggesting that now would be a very good time for industries and commercial entities like chambers of commerce to strategise ways to help poor communities here and in neighbouring communities survive the coming hard times. Build water tanks (offer small financial or food rewards to community members who get their hands dirty); fence land, donate seed and piping; work out effective ways to steer food that’s past its sell-by dates to soup kitchens… we have some bright people in business – put your minds to work to think how basic needs can be met. And xenophobia can be fought – higher numbers of our neighbours will surely cross the borders in search of ways to feed their children and themselves.

I can promise you this: it will be rewarding. It’s the best cure for the blues ever: being altruistic is way better than any pill you can take.

But if you don’t give a damn about your fellow suffering beings, think of it as insurance. Because #RhodesMustFall and all the other hashtags (including the one that has been ridiculously indicted, a move which looked a lot like PW at his most ham-handed) will seem like picnics compared to what could happen if we allow hunger and despair to overwhelm those in whom hope has already faded.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.