Student protest death an eye opener

IT IS indeed a tragedy that a student participating in a violent demonstration has died – in the event, from a gunshot wound.

It is also a tragedy when an inebriated person walks, unaware, into oncoming traffic and is killed.

To the student who is quoted as saying, “Even I feel unsafe now, no one is safe. We have to walk around looking over our shoulder because of security and policemen on campus”: who started the violence?

Did the security personnel suddenly “attack” students? Were policemen walking round the campus during lectures, waiting to attack students?

Another question: Is the principle of self-defence no longer a cornerstone of acceptable behaviour among civilised people? Are bricks thrown through the air NOT “lethal weapons”?

While deploring this tragedy, would the “mourning” students feel as saddened had the security guard been killed by one of the projectiles thrown by protesting students? Would the students have expressed their grief to his widow and abandoned children?

When will so-called “students” cease resorting to violent acts, when exercising their constitutional right to “peaceful protests”? When will they stop burning buildings and libraries and vehicles? When will they exercise their “respect” for others to NOT protest? When will they stop attacking the staff of the institutions designed to “help” them gain the education they claim to desire?

Finally, what is this “free education” that is demanded? Who is going to pay for the buildings and facilities? Who is going to pay for the educational knowledge (staff salaries and research facilities) that is wished for?

Surely, the answer is always, “someone else, just not me!” That “someone else” has to be the long suffering taxpayer, and in this country, the taxpayer is less and less inclined to fund the studies of so-called students who are hell-bent on mayhem and destruction of facilities designed to provide a tertiary education for generations after them. Heaven help us! RAY LALOUETTE Durban