Tuesday, September 14, 2010

An interesting... and obvious solution


Image lovingly pinched from techcentral.co.za

In case anyone wondered just how pedantic our leaders could get about non-important things forgoing the housing, employment, medical and eating needs of South Africans:

A future indaba between the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) and the ANCYL (ANC Youth League) is going to happen soon to work out just whether Julius Malema was having a pop at Jacob Zuma when he mentioned the YL's one-boyfriend-one-girlfriend policy.

The SABC has gone to great pains to deny ever painting a link between the monogomous and oh-so-moral Malema and the ever-marrying President, as a spokesperson said to the Mail and Guardian "We have gone through all the clips around that story and we can clearly say that there is nowhere in all the clips -- both radio and television -- where we have said that whatever Julius Malema was saying, was in reference to Jacob Zuma" (Full story here).

I have a much quicker way of settling this issue. Read:

Firstly, it is obvious that Malema was referring to Zuma. Whether it is direct or not, Malema is referring to people who practice polygamy, and saying that the Youth League does not do it and prefers monogamy instead. If we referred to criminals affecting our country, would be be implicitly including Jackie Selebi? Of course. If we pushed for a pro-choice stance on abortion, are we speaking against Catholics and the ACDP? Indeedly. In the same way, Malema was speaking against a Zuma principle. This tends to happen when we are not all identical and believe the exact same thing all the time.

Secondly, under the South African constitution, you can practice whichever philosophy you like. If you are a polygamist, marry away. If you are not, then date away before marrying once. Both are totally legal and acceptable in a legal sense. Amazingly, we also have this thing called free speech (for the moment, at least) which means we are allowed to agree and disagree and debate things. Not only is it legal, it's encouraged.

So although Malema aims the odd barb at you, Mr Zuma, it matters not.

People are allowed to - and will - disagree with you.

So if the hesitant and confused session over what or when Julius said could be cancelled so we could fix the lives of South Africans... maybe even if the SABC could work on fixing itself? That would be awesome. Thanks.

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