Home | Feature | MORE IS STILL COMING

MORE IS STILL COMING

08/11/2018 01:52:00 By vusi Kunene

Font size:

THERE are some expressions which I loathe to say but they have to be said, sometimes, for people to realise how bad the decisions they make are.

‘More is still coming’ is one of those I hate to say, especially if what is more is something that is not positive or good. But I will say it because I hope people will realise where they made mistakes and correct them. For some time the police service has been acting badly and getting away with it.

The service has not been called to answer for their actions. I have mentioned that placing police officers in schools will have dire consequences.

A police officer saw a girl and thought he could use her did not surprise me much. More is yet to come. The removal of this single officer will not solve the problem. Police officers were never trained to deal with children. They fail to deal with situations which we think they were trained on, and then we expect them to deal with things they do not know. They have failed to deal with the masses and they tend to revert to violence.

I therefore put the blame more on the person who took the police to the schools because that is the person who opened a room for the officers to abuse the children.

The problem here goes beyond the police officers but to the government of this country. I ask myself what kind of leaders would allow such to happen. I also blame the leaders of the police service for allowing this institution to cover up the failures of government officials.

Government would have prevented all this from happening if it was cautious with its spending and planned properly. If the Ministry of Economic Planning was doing its job properly, advising government on economic planning, the problem it faces concerning teachers would have been avoided. At the rate this government is going I fear to say that more than what we have seen is still coming.

If government had the power and resources to deploy police officers in schools, what is stopping it from using those resources to send food to the schools? Schools are now saying they are running out of food and government is not bringing the food, and the reason is that there is no transport to transport the food. Would the fuel used to deploy the police officers to the schools every day not be enough to transport the food to the schools?

As I say more may be coming, I am thinking of the school children one day acting badly out of hunger and frustration. This would be something that the very same police service would be called to deal with instead of government acting proactively and preventing it.

In my opinion and observation in the way that government no longer cares, we are yet to see more in the lack of medication in hospitals. People are still going to die because it is failing to avail drugs in the hospitals. We have failed to prioritise health as a country and the budget is testament to that. The right to health, which also has a bearing on the first right in our Constitution, is not prioritised in the country. What is a priority is security and that is why the security personnel even have the audacity to abuse children they are supposed to protect.

All other civil servants have not got any increment but the police have got huge increments disguised as promotions. If they are treated so special, what will stop them from behaving special even with the children?

Government is not treating its servants equally. Some have to fight for a cost-of-living adjustment while it gives others the adjustments in disguise. I fear that the cat and mouse game played by government with the civil servants will one day haunt the people of this country.

I always shudder when I hear of nurses threatening to down tools because I do not want to imagine the consequences. If that were to happen, government would quickly engage the forces to assist and I imagine disaster.

Maybe I should not fear because it may not happen. The police service will have a new leader and think he will not be willing to quickly send his juniors even where certain qualifications are needed.

We are also have a new Parliament that will do its job and make sure that the expenditure is according to the priorities of the country. We will have a Cabinet that will have the interest of the people at heart. We will have a prime minister who will take advice from the people. But my hope was disturbed when I saw that the new PM has already failed to respect the Constitution. Is more still coming?