Otherhood

DemonSpawn

Date:
03/09/2008

So I write letters to the papers all the time. Mostly, I write to the Mail & Guardian, because they are the most credible paper in the land at this point in time. In any case, this time, I sent a letter to another paper, and they didn't print it because I wouldn't give them my residential details. Dodgy? I think.
So I decided to let you all have a look at it...

In South Africa, the category of �Youth� is a defined age group of individuals between 14 and 24. Julius Malema, who is a Youth League leader, is 27. He is not a youth. And while this subject bears more direct scrutiny, I would like to focus on the implications of an adult, and NOT a youth being in a position to lead and influence a majority of the country�s young minds. He has an army of children at his disposal with the political naiveté of a horde of rabid lemmings. They will look to him for their cue, and he is using this power to inspire sentiments of irreverence and disrespect for the Constitution and the legal process, as well as fostering an �othering� which can lead to ethnocentrism. From there, it is a small step into vigilantism and outright civil war, which he will most assuredly dress up as loyalty and patriotism.

The ANC�s tacit approval of Julius Malema�s and other ANC Youth League member�s inflammatory statements will result in conflict, the likes of which we as a country are not prepared for. When Malema has been dismissed by ANC officials as a hothead who still needs to be groomed and directed, it is an introduction to the kind of civil conflicts we have witnessed before in other parts of Africa, which inevitably end in bloodshed and cycles of violence. When this happens in the months or years to come, ANC leaders will use the familiar phrases �third force�, �apartheid regime� and �white colonialist conspiracy� to cover their exposed behinds, but South Africans will remember this letter and other similar articles, and will agree that the ANC were warned that they were about to unleash a monster, and did nothing, in their arrogance, to stop it.



I thought it was fairly civilised. And yet... Oh for a time when the media wasn't the puppet of the State (here read ANC).



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