THE SPEAR IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PEN
Last week's national hysteria over a mediocre painting epitomised a country that is seriously broken. The hysteria was disproportionate to the more pressing issues at hand.
The ANC went bezerk about a painting that depicted Zuma as a Leninist president that cannot keep his sexual peccadilloes under control. ANC supporters marched in anger, ironically symbolised by a woman wearing an ANC T-shirt wielding her wooden AK47, paraded ad nauseum on our TV screens!
City Press stupidly apologised for publishing pictures of the painting in its paper and website, proving once again that the SPEAR is indeed mightier than the pen. While public intellectuals are waxing lyrical about this comical saga, something more urgent, picked up by the UK's Daily Mail last week, missed our gaze.
Information leaked from a recent UNICEF report reveals that over 11 million of SA's children are chronically poor; 5 million children are HIV-positive and 40% die from the HIV/AIDS pandemic annually.
Over a million children have no access to potable water and more than a million children live in households where no one is employed. In 1985, all deaths constituted 25% of births; by 2021 it will be 87% of all births. One in 5 women in their reproductive ages is HIV+ and the demographic most affected are ages between 15 - 49 years.