Systems Analysis and the Roots of PovertyAbstractSome comments in response to ‘Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge’ by Francis Wilson and Mamphela Ramphele. Poverty is identified as a by-product of the system of wealth accumulation. Attempts to deal with the symptom while preserving the system are dysfunctional and collude with the self-protective dynamics of power and wealth. South African experience is seen as a microcosm of global process and resistance to change in the Province is held in powerful collusion with world dynamics. Transformation of the value-generating level of the system is required. Value-generators are themselves dependent on underlying and often deeply unconscious processes of the common human psyche, previously deemed instinctive but now seen as learned and therefore as open to change. Some possible strategies of intervention are explored. 
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