SA Rocks

There’s been a fair amount of hype and peripheral noise about heroes, helping, social obligations and the like over the past few weeks. With doctors, nurses and pharmacists holding illegal strikes in the middle of a recession it is incredibly promising to see stories like this:

A man who who saved a 13-year-old girl from being raped said he was not a hero because “it’s what any ordinary person would do”.

Bernard Erasmus, 30, of Somerset West, said he had not stopped to think about what he was doing.

Erasmus was so determined that he managed to wrestle the attacker’s knife away from him.
The suspect was later arrested and charged with rape.

Police have hailed Erasmus as a hero for taking action when he saw a crime being committed. But they also warned that citizens who intervened to prevent a crime should be certain that they could do so without risking their own lives and without breaking the law.

This is what I meant in my previous post asking the questions: “Where were you and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?“. This man saw an act so horrible that he felt that in the face of degeneration of the law and this country he should act. He acted. He stood up, took cognisance of what was going on and saved the future of a child.

Source: IOL

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Our decorated, passionate and complicated past has left us with some very interesting personalities and characters. But have we separated them yet? Have we branded Zuma a clown and Mandela an eternal hero? Do we remember Biko and forget Verwoerd?

I believe that the struggles of the past have left SA with a very tricky political conundrum. How do we forget what some of the “clown” did for SA in the past if they are being clowns now? Let’s be honest, the likes of Zuma are riding the crest of collapsing wave that was the past’s freedom fight. That fight is done with and there are real and tangible issues that these leaders need to be dealing with.

We, as a nation, need to pull together and rid ourselves of the belief that we need to entertain the “struggle” leaders who invariably are, themselves, riding out our pseudo-guilt about the past. Enough already.

Heritage day is a fantastic idea and in my opinion should be used by everyone in SA to reflect on our past, our heritage and ourselves and make some decisions about our future here in SA. Let’s start with our mentality toward our leadership because I think that it might just be a joke sometimes. The struggle is over, apartheid is dead.

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