OUR honourable President Jacob Zuma, in his address to the youth on Youth Day in Soweto, was at pains to emphasise the alarming rampant destruction and anarchy that in the last year has engulfed our country. He referred to several instances where universities, schools, clinics and state property had been torched to express grievances in our democracy.
This is the antithesis of the disciplined youth of June 16 1976, who on that day were unarmed and peaceful, and never burnt a school or clinic. The violence that swept through our motherland was the result of the violent response of the apartheid state on that fateful day where Hector Pieterson was the first victim of its murderous agenda.
So to burn and destroy state institutions in our vibrant, young democracy is to trash the legacy of the self-discipline of those heroes who died for our liberation. Our honourable president, referring to the anarchy, concluded: “There is something wrong in our society.”
Indeed there is.
Derick Galloway, Uitenhage