The Dispatch
Online on
Tuesday quoted Pityana as saying: "We must blame nobody but
ourselves for the tragedy of our education system, a collapsing
healthcare system, a bloated but inefficient civil service, pervasive
crime and corruption that has become endemic."
"That is
because we have elected a government without any intelligence
collectively to understand what must be done ... We have a
government trapped in ideological blinkers that believes and behaves
like it is unaccountable."
Pityana was
speaking in Grahamstown on Monday at Kingswood College's annual
memorial lecture to celebrate the life of anti-apartheid activist
Neil Aggett.
He said many
of the country's shortcomings could not be blamed on its evil
apartheid past.
If South
Africans continued to endorse the country's failed leadership, the
result would be "continued chaos, extending inequality,
burgeoning unemployment, poverty and the social evils that have
become characteristic of much of our society".
He
said the ANC and its allies treated with suspicion and hostility any
ideas that did not reinforce their own "stereotypical reality"
and sought to silence the likes of The
Spear artist
Brett Murray, cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro and expelled ANC Youth
League president Julius Malema.
Unemployment
rate
"The truths they seek to present must be suppressed. Yet, we do indeed have a president, head of state and leader of the ruling party, who was charged with rape, was investigated for serious crimes of corruption and who proudly purveys as his trademark his propensity to surround himself with multiplicity of wives."
The Dispatch quoted
Pityana as saying no country that boasted an unemployment rate of
more than 40% should have such a smug government.
"Government
is in no hurry to deal with these matters. Instead it is reported
public resources are being manipulated to enrich the few and to build
a monument to Jacob Zuma's presidency by establishing
a new town on Zuma's doorstep in Nkandla.
And through it all this nation is fast asleep."
He said the
entire structure of government should be about galvanising resources
to achieve the constitutional objectives of human dignity, equality
and the advancement of human rights and freedoms.
"Only
when we are progressing towards the realisation of that ideal will
the deaths of the likes of Neil Aggett not be in vain," said
Pityana.
Pityana is a
former vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa and
chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission, and is now
rector of the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown. –
Sapa, staff reporter