JUSTICE MALALA: Let’s not be scared to speak the hard truth
We need to be honest enough to look crime, women abuse and corruption in the face — and then do something about it
Extract
I wrote a “nice” column last week. I wrote that we must not allow some of the outrageous acts of our politicians and some of our fellow citizens to become normalised in our society. It was a pretty decent column (I think!) as columns go. It said all the right things. It was harsh without being negative. It was forward-looking without ignoring the past. Crucially, everything in it was true.
Yet I have to confess that I think it was all a bit dishonest. It was dishonest because I spoke in general terms and said nothing about what prompted some of these thoughts when the content was screaming for some context. I spoke in general terms because I did not want to seem negative. I spoke in general terms because I did not want to seem like some of those horrible people who live in Australia or elsewhere who say negative things about SA at every turn because they feel a need to justify why they left the country. This was dishonest. It is dishonest because by excluding the personal from my argument I took away the power of my words. The reason I said it is crucial for SA not to allow the outrageous, the abnormal, to become just part of “that’s just how it is” was because in just the month I spent back home in SA the terrifying tentacles of crime and corruption were very close to me. On a beautiful, sunny day at around lunchtime I was driving through Hyde Park when my friend and...
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