Tell us how you really feel, Tom Eaton.

The CEO SleepOut is one of those things that comes around every year, bringing with it outrage, rebuttals, and columnists unleashing the fury.

Back in 2016, we covered some of the backlash, but fast forward to this week and Eaton, on Times LIVE, has really gone to town on the concept.

We’ll jump right in:

You’ve heard of tone-deaf crackers dressing up in blackface. Now get ready for tone-deaf millionaires dressing up in poorface. It’s time to brace yourself for South Africa’s annual masturbatory orgy of poverty porn: the wholly hideous CEO SleepOut…

The organisers of this year’s event, however, don’t call it poorfacing. They call it a “movement”, like, I suppose, a bowel movement.

…it takes a very special kind of shit to imagine that it is a good idea to bid millions of rand to spend a night in Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, something that was on offer until Twitter found out about it and raised a stink.

At the time of writing is it unclear whether the Mandela cell event will go ahead, with Robben Island curators saying they didn’t know about the plan.

The auctioning of a night in Mandela’s old cell was set to raise a minimum of $250 000 (about R3,4 million), and those who defend the CEO SleepOut principle point to the sums raised as proof of its positive impact.

Tom – nope, still not having it:

Indeed, the Onanistic Rapture of Poorfacing, sorry, I mean CEO SleepOut Movement, has given a total of R38.5-million to what it calls “primary beneficiaries” over the past three years…

R38.5-million over three years works out to R12.8-million a year. It sounds like a lot.

But here’s the thing.

Right now, corporate South Africa is sitting on a pile of around R1.4-trillion. This is the unofficial investment boycott we hear about from time to time: the suits refusing to spend a cent until the state shows signs of being able to make South Africa a viable concern…

We break briefly to remember the Reflection Bench from the 2016 event. Hell’s teeth…

Back to business:

If you give R12.8-million a year in the name of Corporate South Africa, an entity that has R1.4-trillion in the bank, you’re effectively giving away 0.0009% of your savings every year.

For someone with R1-million in the bank, that works out to giving away R9.14 a year.

Or, for someone with R50,000 in the bank, 45 cents per year.

You know what’s coming – but what are you doing about it?

So what have ordinary South Africans contributed, compared with the CEO SleepOut “movement”? Well, let’s just say that, proportionally, they’re doing okay.

And much more importantly, they’re doing it discretely. Long before the CEO SleepOut movement, the CEO of another movement suggested: “Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

So ends that rebuke of an event that continues to divide opinion.

My take? For R67, you can put a smile on a kid’s face, and you don’t have to pretend to be poor for a night to do so.

Post about it on social media, don’t post about it on social media and tell nobody – there’s still a happy child out there.

[source:timeslive]