So here is a question; if a Wits protestor removes her shirt and bra willingly for the world to see, is it still impolite to comment on the form? No one wants to be impolite. Not in today’s politically correct and timid environment. Is it, for example, rude to say that it would be best the protestor kept her her shirt where God no doubt intended she keep it. Because if anything would inspire fellow students to run screaming back into their lecture halls, it would be the fear of the damage that could be caused by being hit with one of those. Or worse still, both.
And, would it be out of line, one has to wonder, if one has to suggest that the comments by TakeWitsback Movement’s Tlotli Ntshole where she claims that the Wits needs to be taken back from a “Bunch of Zionists who are interested in getting their degrees so that they can only keep the… the… the… the gap and the inequality” are offensive? Because, they actually are (offensive), when all of a sudden the protest is not so much about the cost of higher education at all. It’s not about fees must fall, but rather, simple, well trodden racism in the form of anti-Semitism. Because it can only be those pesky Zionist (read; Jew) who are responsible for the cost of higher education. And from whom the university must be taken away.
And she says this quite sincerely. As though she means it. Which I am sure she doesn’t, because that would be bigoted and prejudiced and horribly anti Semitic. And pretty dumb because if anything is going to damage what might well be an important cause, it’s the burning of buildings, it’s racism and it’s the flashing of naked untoned breasts (when one least expects it).
It’s not that Jews haven’t been accused of this before. By smarter people than Tlotli. Read the latest Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2016 edition) and it’s all there. Jews are the capitalist responsible for funding wars and controlling all banks. They are also responsible for communisms and socialism and pretty much everything in between. They dominate the world’s media (maybe not Al Jazeera), and from time to time have even killed Christian babies to make their “Jewish bread.” True story; its all there in black and white.
The tragic part is the disservice that this does to a vital and critical dialogue. It cannot be overstated just how important the discussion around free tertiary education is to the country. A country struggling to overcome decades of oppression and the denial of education. And yet the very subject that begs to be engaged is relegated to a foot note, at best. Because when students are burning buildings and accusing Jews of occupying the university, then that this is all that one sees, and all the one hears.
Which is a real pity.
The ANC have taught South Africans that when all else fails they should focus on race, rather than on substantive issues. Ntshole’s comment was no doubt an act of desperation. As was a WhatsApp voice-note circulated to students saying that “Adam Habib will only pay attention when a WHITE student dies.” It is the reversion to a comfortable position that allows the spewing of rhetoric that moved the attention to this subject. It is an attention seeking exercise, little different to flashing of breasts in public and in protest.
I am sure that Tlotli Ntshole has no idea that what she is saying is offensive and prejudiced. And that she sounds fantastically ignorant when she repeats such baseless hatred. I am sure that some of her best friends must even be Jews. And that some years from now she will cringe when she watches the Youtube clip of her interview on ANN7.
At least we can hope.
CREDIT: http://voices.news24.com/howard-feldman/2016/10/the-naked-truth/
