GERMAN journalist and essayist Heinrich Heine once warned that those who burn books will in the end also burn people.

GERMAN journalist and essayist Heinrich Heine once warned that those who burn books will in the end also burn people.

His own country was, a 100 years or so later, to chillingly live up to his observation.

So we are alarmed at the burning of a library in Siyathemba, Balfour, as a form of protest over bad service delivery. It is strange that those who are unhappy should choose to destroy what has already been delivered.

And where those who in the past burnt books were motivated by some form of moral, religious or political zealotry, those who did so at the only local library in the township must have been motivated by a self-destructive rage.

Burning libraries or books is sheer barbarism. The very act must remove any sympathy the protesters might have gained for their cause. We implore the authorities to find the miscreants and punish them before they start targeting human beings.