LITERALLY YOURS alex tabisher I will avoid tiptoeing around false sacred cows

IWAS invited to write a column once a week more than a year ago. It is a platform for discussion, with no political agenda.

It readily admits that it can miss its mark and be abysmally wrong in the opinions expressed, which are mine and only mine.

I will go on writing for the

Cape Argus until I am fired (or until they can’t afford me any longer).

But after a year, I am tired of holding my breath.

This is a public platform, and our newspapers observe protocols.

But there are too many sacred cows being created under the present dispensation in the guise of human rights and charters, formulated long ago to address specific human miscreant behaviour.

Under the banner of human rights that worry me is the sacred undertaking of child-rearing.

For some reason we have nudged aside holy writ and substituted the government’s ban on the rights of parents.

We have adopted, albeit subtly, an ethic of entitlement based on a human charter that almost says you can have a house or career without making any more effort than declaring yourself a victim of a dead ideology.

We have almost convinced a whole nation to believe that all whites are racist.

Or, even worse, that no black citizen can ever be accused of this hideous mindset.

By now, you can see where these reservations that I am positing are leading.

They include a taxi system that doesn’t appear to pay tax.

We have blacks employed in private companies as a matter of national restitution, and rightly so. But these gestures cannot guarantee required skills or service delivery.

We have a humane immigration policy with respect to our neighbours to whom we owe a great debt for their assistance during the fight for democracy.

Inadvertently, our gratitude has the potential of setting black against black for limited job opportunities.

I shall avoid tiptoeing around false sacred cows.

Race is a reality.

Cultural diversity is a fact of life.

Too little available funds for our sick nation is a painful truth. We must avoid making unrealistic demands.

The government mustn’t keep on telling us how much more they are going to borrow from the “profit-mad first nations”, perpetuating our inheritance of Second or Third World status.

Whatever it is that we want, or think we deserve, we must first develop a work ethic.

Jail for people who haven’t learnt tolerance is counter-productive. We need education and dialogue.

If this column survives, it means that you can look forward to more tree-shaking.

The first one will be the issue of language and learning, and the language of learning (not the same thing).

You have been warned.

I shall now take my first deep breath in a long time.