No place for diplomacy amid destruction

ASMALL cartel of students is holding the country to ransom with their roguish behaviour. A court 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 is gone. The rule of law is not 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.

Notice two blatant flaws that will perpetuate this sad state of our nation.

One: the president is singularly silent on expressing an opinion to promote conciliation in the education system, notably the rot and toxicity that mars our academic halls.

Two: the candidates that have thrown their hats into the ring are a motley collection of miscreants who have pathetic records in morality and civic delivery. Then comes the kicker. Who was it who decided that the president’s successor has to come out of the ranks of the ANC?

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 over-stated, revisit your own notions of what was promised in 1994.

We believed the promises, including Bishop Tutu’s well-meant 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?