Zuma: I’d send kids on drugs to Robben Island
FORMER president Jacob Zuma says that if he had been given six months as a dictator, he would have sentenced young people hooked on drugs to Robben Island and forced them to study.
He made the bold statement during a visit to one of the top-performing schools in his hometown, Nkandla, in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
On Saturday, Zuma, 75, told pupils at Bizimali High School that he retired as president too young. “If it were up to me… I would enforce a rule that a child who is not at school be arrested.
“And that those who use whoonga (nyaope), dagga and alcohol be taken to a college, maybe (on) Robben Island, and forced to learn and leave that place with a degree.”
Zuma said parents who allowed their children to “kill themselves with drugs and alcohol” were destroying the future of the nation.
He called on South Africans to take lessons of nation-building from the Zulu monarch, King Shaka.
“Shaka ruled for 12 years… Look at us, we have ruled for 23 years and we are still crying. Democracy should have authority. Once there is no authority in democracy, it becomes worse than a dictatorship, it becomes more dangerous.
“Maybe it’s because he (Shaka) did not sit in many meetings; he knew that if he called a meeting, people would dismiss him,” he explained.
Zuma said although he did not go to school, he wished that the children of Nkandla could be educated, and he wanted to see more presidents come out of his rural hometown.
“For us (blacks) to be exploited and denied knowledge, the oppressors used education to hinder and conquer us. When we are free and don’t know that education is our only tool to free ourselves, that means we are still in the dark, we haven’t seen the road to freedom,” he added.
Zuma said economic power in South Africa still resided in the hands of those who benefited from apartheid and that transformation would take place only if the black majority were educated.
He announced in December that the government would subsidise free higher education for the children of the poor and working class in 2018.
He said he had faced resistance, but would not say from whom.
Zuma said he had remained resolute as he had taken an oath that he would not leave government until free education was introduced, even if he faced criticism.
“I had a lot of arguments with people who said there was no money. Education is more important than other government programmes. If there is no money, let’s take from the least important ones,” he pointed out.