SOMEONE needs to reign in our young people.

SOMEONE needs to reign in our young people.

Their constant flirtation with death and killing should send a collective chill down our spines.

While our mouths were still agape after the shock of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema again threatening to shoot white people on the hollow allegation that they are racist, the PAC Youth League has decided it will not be outdone in this foolishness.

By threatening to kill Malema, simply because he distorts history, the PAC Youth League have themselves betrayed an understanding of the past they purport to defend.

The youth formation of the liberation movement in general needs to be told in no uncertain terms that nobody enjoyed the blood-letting that was a consequence of waging a struggle against white supremacy and its attendant social and economicinjustices.

They need to know that their forebears - the likes of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe, Zeph Mothupeng - who were prepared to kill and be killed for the same human rights that these adolescents take for granted, did not do so because they thought blood-letting was a sport.

Nobody, especially not those who were too young or unborn in the years of armed conflict, must be allowed to cheapen the value of life.

For this is exactly the context in which our heroes understood killing and dying.