What are the signs of our time? What happens when you destroy your own resources, your own country – your own wealth? What will happen to you and your children and grandchildren when the resources are no longer available, and there is nothing more to destroy, and the land is barren? What will happen to the unborn generations?
As the arsonists burn down trucks, causing mayhem on our roads and angry for whatever reason that irks them, whether because of internal political ructions or whether it is the handiwork of the RETs, the adherents of the radical economic programme in their variant forms, it does not matter.
The hard reality is that if this mayhem persists, our future may be doomed.
What will the unborn generations inherit? A wasteland, where hunger, disease, and poverty will rule supreme because there will be no food and medicine – sired by the seeds of vandalism in moments of madness and irrationality?
Have we not learnt what anarchy does to the wealth and economies of countries – and to the psyche of the people?
To the vandals and arsonists, do they not appreciate that what they do will not even serve the interests of their handlers, whoever they may be? Are they so dim-witted not to know that what they do to the economy is self-flagellation, and will in the end throw the country into a spiral of poverty and unending unrest?
It is just under 30 years since black people came out of the darkness and yoke of the jungle of oppression and injustice and inequality imposed on us by the apartheid government. The white minority regime was committed to keeping the black man and woman down, dehumanising them in the process.
Great leaders of the liberation struggle, including luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Abram Ongopotse Tiro, Zeph Mothopeng and Desmond Tutu, would have their hearts sink in sadness in their cold graves if they were to know about this appalling situation in their beloved country.
We defeated the scourge of injustice and apartheid. Black people had their dignity restored. Many, following the 1994 miracle, advanced to positions of authority. The judiciary was transformed. Since then, we have had three of our justices presiding over the judiciary under the tutelage of competent black judges – Mogoeng Mogoeng, Dikgang Moseneke and now Raymond Zondo.
Who will forget the scintillating public protector we had in Prof Thuli Madonsela. She ran the institution with honour and decorum, second to none.
Self-flagellation, through mayhem unfolding in various parts of the country where trucks and property are destroyed and burnt to the ground, is not the way to go. Law enforcement must step up and stop this madness.
All men and women of goodwill must rally around each other and protect their country from being stolen by hoodlums masquerading as pursuing a just
political cause.
We as the newspaper, with many thousands of our readers, condemn these acts of barbarism. We say, not in our name.
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