• Tweet

 We all need to return to the basics of talking things over.. Love, peace, tolerance and being grounded must be encouraged 

RELATED ARTICLES

• Ubuntu starts with each of us
• The rot has set in in our society
• 'Sister orders brother's murder over a cellphone'
• Manhunt ends in arrest of Soweto tenant
• Company employees humiliated by altered photograph
• 'Baboons' taunt condemned
• Generations under racial microscope
• 'Your black friend not welcome here'
• Hate crime remembered
• Cops in court for robbing taxi association
• 'Man kills dogs for food'
• 'ANC is a patient and it is sick'
• Public outrage over Biko-like police brutality
• Grandfather admits molesting kids
• Grieving family's nightmare
• Struck off 'doctor' a serial con artist
• Court hears how ex-MEC beat wife
• Gran burnt to death
• Nurses 'refused to help victim'
• Four cops nabbed over extortion claim
• No bail for 'monster' husband
• Traditional healer and patient arrested for murder
• Unions demand end to corruption
• 'Rapist' pastor trying to get bail
• Stop using a 'foreign tendency' of insulting leaders - Mantashe
• Dad hangs son (4)
• Woman hacked to death by lover
• Traffic cops bust for licence bribes
• Shooting on Shembe holy mountain
• Auditor-General's dire findings

This is demonstrated by the spate of deaths involving parents, spouses and their children, when negotiations, counselling and other psychological and/or psychiatric interventions could have helped avert unnecessary tragedies.

Colleagues are turning on colleagues with violence and then turning guns on themselves. Fathers hack or hang their children and take their own lives. Mothers are either strangling or poisoning their children and then also dying.

Leaders, in this case the government, have to institute measures aimed at creating an enabling atmosphere in which people feel free to approach managers for help when stress, depression, confusion and anger threatens common sense.

A lack of tolerance seems to be ruling people's emotions. Poor judgement seems to be a more serious factor. This problem is even worse where people of meagre means are involved and affected.

Far too many such deaths have occurred and little or no action seems to have been taken to minimise the number or nip this disturbing phenomenon in the bud.

South Africa needs its citizens. Leaders in business, government and other powerful state and private organs of influence need to cooperate and collaborate with the people to encourage a spirit of ubuntu in the family, community, workplaces, and life in general because it is seemingly easiest these days to kill and then self-immolate.

We all need to return to the basics of talking things over.

The clergy need to fight a new enemy that is eating away at the root of the society, community and the nation's fabric - the family.

Love, peace, tolerance and being grounded are possible. These can be taught, encouraged and even influenced.

Meanwhile, the recent finding of a survey showing that by 2040 South Africans will be having only one child per family is truly food for thought. The tone of the poll seems to bemoan the impending decrease in population numbers. In the past, the powers that be were up in arms decrying the rise in population numbers. It seems as if the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Comments

• Sign in or sign up to comment

Thu May 17 05:57:39 SAST 2012 ::

Jan 17, 2012

letsetse

Well if morality is important our leaders should be the one spear heading the process because they are the one eroding the moral fibre.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

RobinH

At the moment the vast majority of South Africans seem to be simple follow-my-leader ostriches. We prefer to abdicate decision making and leave it to blind loyalty to provide roadmaps. We also aspire to emulate these deified but severely flawed leaders, and with the role models these present to the people, social decay is hardly surprising. You want something, take it. You want sex, rape someone. You're unhappy, have a dose of road-rage. You want a job, bribe the right guy and if someone gives you a hard time, take him or her out. The New SA Code.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

RobinH

munhu: "the red one in The USA"??? Where's that?
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

Reyataz

Noir19, letsetse, I agree with you both!.
RobinH, munhu means the Red States as in those that vote Republican. In this context s/he means your conservative ones, including but not limited to the Bible Belt.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

munhu

@Robin H, sorry wanted to say the red ones-(The Red states) Hope am clear now.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

munhu

I strongly feel that the SA constitution gives its citizens too much freedoms, most of which coincide with our own African values.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

RobinH

Thanks Reyataz and Munhu - I get it now.

MommaC. Presies.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

Afrojoy

@ Munhu
Crafters of the SA constitution deliberately took a decision to come up with a constitution that protected every imaginable human right. This is understandable given where SA was coming from at the time. But in doing so, the threw away the baby with the water....issues like the death penalty were prematurely outlawed and now SA is being haunted by the highest murder rates outside any war zone....
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

MommaC

munhu

Would you rather live in a 'nanny' state where everything you do is legislated?
The constitution simply assumes that adults are adults and shouldn't be treated as children.
Report Abuse

Jan 17, 2012

Reyataz

We, as a nation, are too primitive to have as liberal a constitution as ours. We need to educate and empower our people economically and maybe then, when a lot of people take pride in their own lives, environment and work, we can deal even harsher with corruption, murder, rape and drugs. But for now it is a field day for all scumbags, including West African drug lords, corrupt ministers' wives, fornicating presidents, disgraceful police and greedy comrades. Cry the beloved country!
Report Abuse

Read all 84 comments