LITERALLY YOURS Time’s up for diplomacy

ASMALL cartel of students is seemingly holding the country to ransom with their roguish behaviour.

A court recently issued an indictment against four students to desist from disrupting one of several campuses of a known university, then they shifted their focus.

The time for diplomacy, we have to say, is gone.

The rule of law is not at all negotiable. Its opposite is anarchy.

If we take an overview of the regression from the statue that had to fall, then the fees, then the destruction of buildings and art and now anything they set their minds to, we see that all attempts at amelioration have been met with recalcitrance and intractability.

They are listening only to themselves.

We have been reduced to conducting a rhetoric called Fallism.

If it held the promise of diplomatic negotiation, with a view to arriving at a solution, one could countenance such a discourse.

But the agenda of these protagonists includes only confrontation, accusation and then mindless destruction instead of academic engagement and intervention.

Assuming that these young folk need adult guidance, apply your mind to the upcoming elections for a replacement for President Zuma. African National Congress?

This organisation, which deserves credit for its role as an organ of liberation, has a pathetic track record as a government.

We seem to have appointed a cabinet/government of rogues and tarts, miscreants who have their eye on the stock exchange and their thumbs on the scales of veracity.

If you feel the case is overstated, revisit your own notions of what was promised back in 1994.

We believed the promises, including Bishop Tutu’s wellmeant but diaphanous metaphor of a “rainbow nation”.

Revisit Madiba’s dream for a place that would be safe for children.

Did this include the children who are now seeing their time as students as a time to defy governance, morality, respect for institutions, and disregard for historic and political consequence?

And for which of these spurious activities will they demand accreditation when it comes to graduation?

And what will they put into their CVs when they apply for jobs?