HOW many times have you heard it said, by some who are honoured and trusted with leadership, that it is inappropriate to compare a new South Africa with the apartheid era one?
Those familiar with such pompous assertions might still be favoured with good memory to keep the score. I have lost count.
Others, already at their wits end with the preachers of such hoity-toity proclamations, no longer bother listening to the unrelenting hogwash.
If the state of affairs has the ring of déjà vu, how can comparisons ever be avoidable?
It is as if the sins of "liberators", behaving as lamentably badly as their ousted oppressors, should enjoy exemption and gain automatic passage to forgiveness.
Dishonest public representatives and their allied devotees, including those milking profits from the plight of the desperately poor, should be made aware they are not the first on the stage of history for their misdeeds to be considered unprecedented.
Is it not the same history that teaches us that those who refuse to learn from it are doomed to repeat it?
When "liberators" begin to behave as shameless as the oppressors that came before them, then why would the comparison so occasioned be castigated as inappropriate?
For a new South Africa to place itself beyond comparison with the old one, its custodians must not lead us to the repetition of the doom that history had warned against. The word for it is a banana republic.
What warning signals, if ignored, can lead to the country reducing itself to such a republic? It is when society surrenders its critical common sense.
The erosion of common sense, in the life of a nation, occurs when those that have become instant millionaires are the first to bark for infinite patience from those who hardly can make ends meet because, as the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day.
Had Rome of yesteryears not fiddled, she would have avoided reducing herself in the flames of her own destruction.
Rome then and South Africa now might be years and distances apart but it is still history talking.
Is it also not true that where there is no vision, people perish? The disregard of the right to life on March 21 1960 in Sharpeville did not see the 69 dead as people with rights to stand for.
Had South Africa demonstrated vision capability, history would probably not have repeated itself at Marikana on August 16 2012.
If the right to life remains fundamental and constant factor, then the circumstances under which life is defended or lost in the old and a new South Africa should be met with steadfast and comparative analytic honesty.
Comparative analysis should help us to know that the new society, for which many have died, does not live in the shadow of an old one that is refusing to die.
Not only is a new society is expected to announce equality but to also demonstrate its felt common experience to all citizens. Care should be taken to ensure that the fruits of the tree of liberation are not made bitter by continuously quenching its thirst from the blood of the most downtrodden and the innocent.
It is with this in mind that leaders, worthy of their offices, need not fear when comparison is made between the new and the old South Africa. Common sense is all we have to make wolves, masquerading as herbivores, to abandon their sheep skins and for the chaff to separate from the grain.
Criticism need not be assumed malicious nor should blind support be considered a virtue.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it
HOW many times have you heard it said, by some who are honoured and trusted with leadership, that it is inappropriate to compare a new South Africa with the apartheid era one?
Those familiar with such pompous assertions might still be favoured with good memory to keep the score. I have lost count.
Others, already at their wits end with the preachers of such hoity-toity proclamations, no longer bother listening to the unrelenting hogwash.
If the state of affairs has the ring of déjà vu, how can comparisons ever be avoidable?
It is as if the sins of "liberators", behaving as lamentably badly as their ousted oppressors, should enjoy exemption and gain automatic passage to forgiveness.
Dishonest public representatives and their allied devotees, including those milking profits from the plight of the desperately poor, should be made aware they are not the first on the stage of history for their misdeeds to be considered unprecedented.
Is it not the same history that teaches us that those who refuse to learn from it are doomed to repeat it?
When "liberators" begin to behave as shameless as the oppressors that came before them, then why would the comparison so occasioned be castigated as inappropriate?
For a new South Africa to place itself beyond comparison with the old one, its custodians must not lead us to the repetition of the doom that history had warned against. The word for it is a banana republic.
What warning signals, if ignored, can lead to the country reducing itself to such a republic? It is when society surrenders its critical common sense.
The erosion of common sense, in the life of a nation, occurs when those that have become instant millionaires are the first to bark for infinite patience from those who hardly can make ends meet because, as the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day.
Had Rome of yesteryears not fiddled, she would have avoided reducing herself in the flames of her own destruction.
Rome then and South Africa now might be years and distances apart but it is still history talking.
Is it also not true that where there is no vision, people perish? The disregard of the right to life on March 21 1960 in Sharpeville did not see the 69 dead as people with rights to stand for.
Had South Africa demonstrated vision capability, history would probably not have repeated itself at Marikana on August 16 2012.
If the right to life remains fundamental and constant factor, then the circumstances under which life is defended or lost in the old and a new South Africa should be met with steadfast and comparative analytic honesty.
Comparative analysis should help us to know that the new society, for which many have died, does not live in the shadow of an old one that is refusing to die.
Not only is a new society is expected to announce equality but to also demonstrate its felt common experience to all citizens. Care should be taken to ensure that the fruits of the tree of liberation are not made bitter by continuously quenching its thirst from the blood of the most downtrodden and the innocent.
It is with this in mind that leaders, worthy of their offices, need not fear when comparison is made between the new and the old South Africa. Common sense is all we have to make wolves, masquerading as herbivores, to abandon their sheep skins and for the chaff to separate from the grain.
Criticism need not be assumed malicious nor should blind support be considered a virtue.
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