"We’ll shoot and kill you if you continue to write these things," - Sbu Ngobeni
Posted: September 11, 2008 at 5:34 pm
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20080911141538545C746132
I should choose my words wisely. Because Sbu Ngobeni is quoted today by Independent Newspapers, as saying he will “shoot and kill” Jonathan Shapiro, who Mr. Ngobeni says “deserved to rot in hell” for Sunday’s cartoon indicating Jacob Zuma was being assisted by the Alliance to rape the justice system.
Do we now live in a country were people can threaten to MURDER others for having a different opinion to one’s own? Pierre De Vos may think the talking heads of this country spend too much time constitutionalising politics, but when protest organisers such as Mr. Ngobeni, voice there intent to murder other citizens for having a differing opinion perhaps we need to lie politics to one side for a moment, and ask ourselves as citizens, as human beings, whether we should tolerate such hate speech.
I believe in the freedom of speech, and I understand that Mr. Ngbobeni, and many like him, have the right as I do to exercise that freedom. I also understand that Mr. Ngobeni, and many activists like him, are feeling frustrated and enraged at the political circus that the Zuma trial has become. I respect Mr. Ngobeni’s right to support Jacob Zuma. That is his right.
But no one has the right to threaten another human being with death. With execution. With being murdered. How can political satire by one man mean that murder is on the cards? What on earth is Mr. Ngobeni thinking?
In the final analysis we must all be judged on our words and our deeds. I understand why so many are frustrated in our country, the failure of service delivery to the poor, the failure of leadership. And yet, this frustration cannot have an exit in violence, and that would seem to be ANCYL’s policy: a policy of thuggery and violence; mimicking the black shirts, and the SA of Italian and German fascism they are threatening the people of South Africa with violence, with murder, with intimidation.
Our government, our leaders are failing us. On the part of the opposition, who simply wail and take no action, legal or otherwise, there should be shame heaped on them for continuing to enter into dialogue in the court of public opinion with such thugs; our opposition truly play from Neville Chamberlain’s playbook.
The ANC (if one could call it that?) government, or at least the Mbekites, should DO something about the trashing of our civil society that ANCYL and its partners seem hell bent on achieving; The ANC, like a good parent, should provide leadership and certainty to the youngsters of their party. Otherwise there will be grave consequences for our society and our economy; and if ANCYL and the poor of this country think that service delivery is bad now, with SARS and the treasury’s coffers overflowing with the fat of corporate and private taxes, they should wait and see how hard it is to deliver services, such as the government has committed to, when the investment climate turns against these barbaric exhortations to crime.
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Filed under: Commentary, Corruption, Economy, Ideas, Language, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Rant, Society, War, Zuma, ethics by Andrew la Grange
Andrew, an excellent post. I would totally agree with you. I recently put a post on my own blog, voicing a similar sentiment, but also comparing the situation in Malaysia (with Raja Petra) and the possible future for the Freedom of Expression in South Africa.