Malls have a life of their own

IHEAR the owners of shopping malls feel they are under threat from online shopping companies. They seem to think shoppers will soon prefer to stay at home, do their buying on their laptops or smartphone, then have the goods delivered to their homes.

I can’t see this being much of a threat in South Africa. From what I see, we regard shopping malls as social gathering places as much as retail buying centres.

Wherever I go shopping I see people of all ages socialising and just “hanging out”.

Some of them are actually inside the shops and buying stuff, but I’d say about a quarter of the people in a shopping mall at any time are there for non-commercial reasons.

Bear in mind that most of the towns and cities through the world started as market places.

People who had made cheese or slaughtered chickens or brewed a batch of elderberry wine brought them to the crossroads on a certain day of the week and sold them, or swopped them for other people’s wares.

Market stalls were built and places were set aside for tethering the horses and parking the wagons.

Inns were established where farmers could buy a beer or two with the money they had earned from the sale of their cabbages or pork. Before long a village had grown, then a town and eventually a city.

Have you noticed that every city still has a “market square” or a “Longmarket Street?”

Before the days of smartphones and email chats, the only way of knowing local news was to share it with someone face to face. You could be sure it would soon spread across the village.

“Did you hear Mrs Smith’s Mary became engaged to Rodney the butcher’s son? And widow Jones’s Julia is expecting a new baby in spring?”

The market place has been the centre of life – and news – for towns around the world for centuries. Why should it be any different today?

We may say we just popped into the shops for a few minutes to buy butter, but while we’re there we might as well be sociable and ask the Reverend Wallace to join us for a cup of tea (and he’s always able to supply a few juicy details). And we might as well ask Mr Brooks whether he knows the name of a good footman to replace Thompson when he leaves to get married.

No, I think it will be a long time before shopping malls become obsolete.

Last Laugh

Late at night a drunk fellow was on his hands and knees under a street lamp, obviously searching for something in the gutter.

A policeman approached and asked what the problem was.

“When I came out of the pub I stumbled and dropped my keys and now I can’t find them.”

“Where did this happen, sir,” asked the cop.

“About 50m away, in front of the Red Lion.”

“So why are you looking for your keys here, sir?”

“It’s no good looking for them back there. You can’t see a thing.

“The light is much better here under the lamp-post.” IN AUGUST last year, Higher Education Minister Naledi Pandor told Parliament the damage caused by protesting students in the Fees Must Fall movement had cost universities nearly R800 million.

Over three years of protests, the students destroyed laboratories, libraries and university buildings on campuses across the country.

Among the worst affected was the North-west University, which sustained R198m in damage, and the University of Johannesburg, where the damage totalled R144m.

Reports of students being tried and convicted for this violence are few, one of the more prominent being activist Kanya Cekeshe, who was convicted of public violence and malicious damage to property for trying to set a police van alight during the protests – a crime he admitted to.

This week we heard from National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Shamila Batohi the difficulty faced by the organisation in securing convictions, and the “shockingly low” rate of convictions versus the number of reported cases – “under 10%, and that might even be a generous estimate”.

It was, therefore, galling to hear Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola say his department would assist Cekeshe to apply for a presidential pardon and that his willingness to help the activist would not undermine the judiciary, or undo the work of the prosecutor in the case.

But that is exactly what assisting Cekeshe will do. It will undermine the rule of law, which South Africans are begging to be upheld.

The message he is sending out is that committing crimes will be overlooked by his department – and, by extension, the government – as long as it is motivated by a cause.

But who will decide which cause is just?

And it is not only the wanton destruction of property that Lamola will condone by his actions, but also the disruption of academic programmes and the aggression and violence directed by the protesters at fellow students and university staff.

Students are those we hope will lead the country into a bright future.

We dare not have them graduating with the notion that the government thinks it is okay for them to burn and destroy to get a point across.

Cekeshe must do the time.