Thought Leaders

In any civilised society, university students are placed in an elevated position.  They are supposed to be above the herd, in terms of their thinking capabilities, their knowledge of events and history far beyond the scope of the courses they are taking, and in terms of their ability to apply reason to what they intend to say before the words are uttered.  They are the leaders of the future, and most of them accept the responsibility that this imposes on them.  That has always been true of South African university students, many of whom have shown their ability, their courage and, sometimes, their foolhardiness in speaking truth to authority.  This is sometimes punished, and, usually, not rewarded, as has been shown conclusively by the thousands of such students who stood up to the Apartheid Police, in demonstrations and in silent roadside vigils in sun, rain and in icy winter conditions.

Occasionally, one such student develops political aspirations, and decides to use his position of putative thought leadership to make outrageous statements, hoping that the unthinking herd will follow his lead.  Often, those who hear the statements, or who are the target of them, understand that the statements are part of the immaturity of the person, the mental incapability to understand the history and the profound meaning of such history or, sometimes, the simple abject stupidity of the person making such statements.  However, at times the speaker is a person who puts such stupidity arrogantly on public display, no doubt with the intention of gaining the notoriety that persons of much lesser learning arrogate to themselves by means of profoundly stupid utterances.

Such a person is the President of the Students Representative Council of the University of the Witwatersrand, Mcebo Dlamini.  That body has always been contrarian, but it has usually maintained a position that might be understood, if not forgiven, on the basis of the immaturity of the members.  However, when Dlamin published a statement on Facebook that every White person had elements of the Nazis in them. Dlamini demonstrated conclusively his lack of intelligence, his lack of capability to understand the lessons of history, and his lack of the discretion that one would expect of a leader of a student body in the previously august body of learning, a body that, at one time, had the ability to claim the moral high ground, at a level well above that of the ANC, which had proved by its actions against its own cadres and against the mass of Black people that it claimed to represent (don’t forget the campaign of cold-blooded murders, ‘necklacings’, carried out under the instruction of Comrade Winnie).  He explained his views in a TV interview, which spoke very clearly of the minimal knowledge he has of the facts of the rise to power of Hitler, even of the timeline.  Dlamini compounded his stupidity by stating that he ‘likes the Nazis, for their organisational abilities’ something that was undoubtedly better than the ANC, but which cannot in any sane society be used as a reason for respect for a group of vicious, self-centred genocidal thugs which drove one of the most advanced and civilised societies in a lemming-like scurry over the precipice to national suicide.  He also admires the way that ‘Hitler brought back the pride of the German people in 1938’, which happens to be the year of the most horrific anti-Jewish actions of that murderous Government.  This is the sort of populist claptrap drivel that one has come to expect of persons like Julius Malema (it is noteworthy that the EFF Wits Branch has come out in support of Dlamini’s comments) and certain senior members of the ANC.  Come to think of it, that could be a description of the ANC and the EFF!

One wonders what course of study Dlamini is undertaking, and what his level of success in those studies might be.  One also wonders whether the University will stand up for what is right and good, and take the logical action of expelling this man.  Evil deserves to be punished, and there can be no doubt that Dlamini is evil.  This will not be censorship.  It will be the excision of a dangerous cancer, one that needs to be removed before it infects the entire society.  It would be comparable with the imprisonment or execution of Adolph Hitler before he imposed his insanity on a noble nation.  If the University fails to take such an action, it would be reasonable to conclude that it endorses his statement.  I personally hope that this will not be the case.  I worked hard to gain my two degrees from Wits, and, until recently, I was proud of them.  The fact that a man like Dlamini can be a leader of the students of Wits deprives me of that pride.  I, as well as thousands of my peers, dread that we, our intellectual honesty and our moral standards should be compared with Dlamini.