I LIKE to think of myself as an optimistic person, and my friends seem to agree.
“Potatoes, you always look on the bright side,” they say when we’re talking about the news.
“You’re one of those glass-half-full types.”
To which I usually reply: “Half a glass is good, but a full one is better. Now hand me that bottle!”
These days, though, I think I should change my ways. Maybe being hopeful in the face of so many reasons not to be isn’t optimism, but stupidity.
I’m really worried about the future of Mzansi. The main reason I’m worried is because of a lack of resources.
There’s one resource in particular that we seem to be lacking, and without it the future is going to be darker than even Eskom can make it.
I’m not talking about money or water or gold. No, I’m talking about young leaders, the men and women who are supposed to take over this beautiful country of ours one day.
Why am I suddenly so worried? One name: Mcebo Dlamini.
He’s the Wits SRC president who’s been in the news this past week because of his love for that mass murderer Adolf Hitler.
After first professing his love on Facebook, he then went on TV to make an even bigger fool of himself. But more of that later.
I first want to ask how this guy became SRC president in the first place. Last year, when he was still just head of a residence house committee, it was revealed that he was lying about his identity and qualifications.
He claimed to be Mcebo Sisulu, grandson of Walter Sisulu. His mum, he said, was a Swazi princess.
After the lies upon lies he told reporters, he eventually had to admit the truth and start using his real surname.
Despite all of this, despite being exposed as lying about who he is, where he comes from and what he’d achieved academically, he was elected as SRC president.
What the hell is wrong with these Wits kids?
Maybe it’s not just the quality of our young leaders that spell disaster for our future, but the youth in general.
Let’s get back to Sisulu, sorry, I mean Dlamini’s performance on TV. He went on and on about how all white people are filled with hatred and how black people can’t be racist.
And all the while I kept thinking to myself, what I’m seeing from you now, Mcebo, is nothing but racism and hatred.
I don’t believe in this new nonsense where people try to redefine racism using all these fancy words. You can’t change reality by changing words, like these Marxist professors think.
I actually started worrying about the kid, he was literally shaking with anger as the hate dripped from his mouth. What if he had a stroke or something in the studio?
But my biggest worry isn’t for him or other young people like him, but for everyone.
We’re all going to be in deep kak if we’re led by people like Dlamini.
THE hatred now being promoted by these young thugs who see themselves as great leaders will lead to nothing but tears.
You know the writing is on the wall when people start idolising Hitler and Mugabe instead of King and Gandhi.
The first two have caused nothing but suffering and war, while the other two gained freedom for their people and helped to create peace. The reason Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr were able to do so was because they rejected hate.
They didn’t try to demonise and incite violence against white Americans or the British, because they knew that hatred only leads to more hatred.
That’s why Nelson Mandela and the real Sisulus looked to people like them for inspiration, not to Hitler or Idi Amin.
I’m glad Madiba and the other great leaders who fought for a noble cause aren’t here to see how hard these kids are working to dismantle their dreams.
) Tell Mr Potatoes what you think: [email protected]
Until next time, salani kahle!
This article first appeared in the Sunday Sun.
