Country on the brink – Mabizela
FUTURE leaders should be chosen with greater wisdom and forethought, Rhodes University vice-chancellor Sizwe Mabizela said in a hard-hitting speech yesterday.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony, he said the country had been pushed to breaking point by greed, corruption, deceit and a spectacular failure of political leadership.
In his sharpest criticism of President Jacob Zuma’s administration yet, Mabizela said recent political and economic developments emphasised the need for quality, caring, bold, moral and compassionate leadership.
The country was at a crossroads and it needed university graduates more than ever.
“You graduate at a time when our nation is engulfed with anger, turbulence and racial polarisation, at a time when the foundations and pillars of our constitutional democracy are being challenged and tested,” he said.
“You are graduating into a society in which greed, corruption, deceit and malfeasance have been perfected into an art form.
“Our country has been pushed to a breaking point and our society is unravelling. Fast.”
Mabizela urged graduates to use their skill, integrity, honesty, innovative ideas, knowledge, youthful idealism and enthusiasm to pull the country out of the abyss.
Meanwhile, renowned artist Penny Siopis has questioned whether the now-infamous Za- piro cartoon, depicting rape, was worth the hurt it caused.
Siopis, who was awarded an honorary doctorate, said the cartoon had sparked a necessary debate around public symbols.
She said while Jonathan Shapiro, aka Zapiro, had defended his use of rape as a metaphor for the violation of the country through state capture, rape was an all too pervasive and painful reality in South Africa.
“What is demonstrated by presenting rape as the so-called universal sign for violation, and women as the sign of a nation, is that our visual language is still imprinted with patriarchal and colonial inscriptions,” she said.
“It shows that images can hurt. Is the image worth the hurt?”