Publications
Partners
“Education is the most powerful weapon”. Words of wisdom from the man of freedom, Nelson Mandela. Dr Mandela was removed from his life for twenty seven years, while fighting for the freedom we have today. The Women’s March in 1956, and the march of the youth of 1976, took a stand against the Apartheid laws of the time, so we could have the education choices we have today.
Is this how we are thanking those who fought with their lives for the freedom we have? By burning and destroying centres of learning? By disrupting learning for everyone, because of our self serving desires? By endangering lives?
Wanting to be heard and hoping to receive the answers we want to hear, angry and frustrated, we seek for solutions.
Led by anger, we are making bad decisions; we are burning schools, both tertiary and elementary schools... how is this helping us toward coming up with solutions for the problems we are already facing?
A few months back, over twenty schools were burnt to ashes in Limpopo, as was the U.J. Res. Recently, on the 29th of August, the cafeteria of the University of Kwazulu-Natal was also burnt down, and on the 31st of August, in the morning, U.K.Z.N was again attacked by flames. By God’s grace, no one was hurt. One wonders which school or university will be next to be set on fire.
This absurd, heartbreaking and foolish trend of burning down a learning environment is one of the reasons we are not growing as a country. In fact, this trend will lead to the death of the economy if not dealt with rapidly.
In the meantime, let us wait and see how much money will be needed to repair the damage...which could have been avoided.
We do not need flames to burn the country down. We need fire within the mind to empower us to come up with ways to build our country, and not break it down. We need solutions to build our Rainbow Nation, and to conquer problems such as poverty, unemployment and crime.
Now, how will we get these solutions, which are needed desperately (as in yesterday!), when we burn down the learning environments which are supposed to empower learners to come up with solutions for the benefit of the entire country, if not the whole world?
Our economy needs to grow, but it will not grow as long as our mentality is low. We have a lot to repair already. Why are we adding unnecessary damage which could be avoided if we all just think?
Andile Ndaba
A Stressed-out Student
