Sowetan Editorial

As of tomorrow, the public workers' strike will have been in effect for 3 weeks. Three weeks without schools, with limited health care, limited services....

Today I saw a very interesting commentary by the editors of a popular Black newspaper, The Sowetan. I'd like to reprint it here.

"TEACH, DON'T CHEAT THE FUTURE"

"Few things are as infuriating as the sight of adults behaving like irrational delinquents. It is worse when teachers--those people who are supposed to shape our leaders of tomorrow--revel in such conduct. It is, in fact, tragic for our teachers have become a runaway train of destruction. When they are supposed to be teaching our children to live by the dictum of live and let live, they are practically telling them 'do as we do(strike in this case) or you are an enemy to be destroyed.' They have conveniently forgotten that we all have a right to say no to the strike. It is time for SADTU and COSATU to stop denying that some of their striking members are behaving like a pack of wild hounds. Many of us witnessed their members' wanton attacks on others, the tearing of a fence, trashing their surroundings and beating up teachers at a private school in Soweto. Shivering with fear, one teacher locked himself in a toilet as the mob ran amok. Such thuggery will remain an enternal blight on our democracy. We urge SADTU to join us in our call for a halt to the rampaging. SADTU and COSATU must also act now against such barbarism, lest their cause be riddled with the blood of innocents."