My good (although very liberal) friend, Philip says: “We should really start focussing on the positive things and be proudly South African about those.” I didn’t reply – liberals have the annoying habit of repeating silly clichés until they believe it themselves. Although: There is one good thing we can focus on: The free entertainment.
I mean, in all other countries people pay money to purchase tickets for the kind of humour and entertainment which we get for free every day in watching the Jacob Zuma Show live. We at Front Nasionaal Suid-Afrika had a good laugh at the latest example of Zumanism.
I am referring to his remark that children should be taken away from teenage mothers and the mothers should then be banned to Robben Island to sit and study until they can take care of the children. I am sure he meant well, but like one of my old programme directors in the broadcasting business used to say: “When you’re on air, keep in mind that there is always someone more intelligent than you listening to your broadcast.”
In all seriousness: What is supposed to be done with the babies while the mothers study? What are they supposed to study – an education gained by passing with a 30% pass rate does not make a young mother particularly employable.
In a report commissioned by “Partners in Sexual Health” in 2013 and compiled by Samantha Willan we discover two little problems which might cause this latest idea of the president not too work all too well. Willan determines that:
- 30% of teenage girls in South Africa report having been pregnant at some stage, with the majority in the 17/18 years of age group.
- Despite the fact that the South African Schools Act of 1996 makes provision for a pregnant girl to stay in school and complete her education after the baby is born, only about one third of pregnant girls opt for this. Furthermore, a significant number of pregnant girls dropped out of school BEFORE falling pregnant.
So now, president Zuma: How do you plan to host 30% of South African teenage girls on Robben Island – there would hardly be standing room for everyone? And on a much more serious note: It is the disaster of a welfare state which your government created that lies at the root of this crisis. For an 18 year old, not all too bright girl in a township, it is a profitable occupation to drop out of school, fall pregnant and apply for Social benefits…which the taxpayer must provide.
Mr Zuma, don’t send them to Robben Island – rather stop rewarding them for falling pregnant and then you go back to Robben Island. That might solve a lot of our problems overnight.
While we are on the topic of government meddling with people having children: I wonder whether the president, so vehemently denying a racial genocide in South Africa, ever looked at the following:
In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) which defined the crime of genocide for the first time.[6]
The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). It contains an internationally recognized definition of genocide which has been incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Article II of the Convention defines genocide as:
…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Mr Zuma, if you look at stipulation (e) – can you deny that current legislation, making it virtually impossible for white, childless couples to adopt a white child, but being forced to adopting a black child in stead, while white children are given to black parents, , is anything but part of the genocide of a nation?
I think you should care more about your own substantial brood living in luxury at our expense. And by the way: That time when you slept with the daughter of your friend, would she have been sent to Robben Island if she fell pregnant by you as well?
Honestly, the entertainment value of the ANC regime and its chief clown increases by the day.
(Daniel – Front Nasionaal Suid-Afrika Information Dept)
