Youth of Zimbabwe arise!
June 13th, 2007
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JUNE 16 is the date that commemorates the day when students in Soweto marched against the apartheid machinery in protest against the forced learning of Afrikaans for all people in South Africa. This weekend, the youth of this country have a reason to march against an illegal regime that is denying them a secure future and forcing them in to exile. This regime is on record as having declared that they can do with only 6 million people out of a population of 12 million. So in addition to playing God, they have declared their total and utter contempt for you so that you are condemned to a life of endless toiling in foreign lands far away from your families.
What are your options?
You could cross the Limpopo and brave the crocodiles, and then trek to Johannesburg, land of elusive milk and honey. There, you could face low wages, constant harrassment, bribery and frequent deportations back home.
You could go to England, America or Australia and discover that “the grass is greener on other side till you get there and see for yourself” as Lucky Dube would say. It is tough out there: young people and your older brothers and sisters are working two jobs each up to 20 hours day, 365 days a year and still only manage to pay the rent, buy some food and send a penny back home. It is not a life.
Remember that among you are others who have been taken advantage of by the regime.
Using the poverty that they have created, the regime has fed some of you in so-called ‘national service camps’. They have fed you on a diet of lies, unprotected sex, rape, murder, assault and indoctrination on patriotism. They have given you the power to wear a t-shirt and have people be scared of you. Instead, many of you will find that this is nothing but indigestion of nightmares for the rest of your lives.
Just like the five brigade who were used to subdue whole provinces in the eighties, they have turned some of you into the very personification of evil until evil itself has come to collect its dues by haunting your every thought and your sleep with unspeakable memories.
Is this an option you want?
Years ago, the youth in SOWETO decided that theirs was not a life either and so they took on the regime – not with violence but with a peaceful march. And that day shook the earth under the feet of the mighty apartheid regime, and change was put on the agenda. Years ago, the world was not watching so keenly.
In this modern day of the internet, phone and digital cameras, the regime knows the world is watching. That is why they are spending thousands of pounds of your parents’ tax money to try and present a clean image to the world. They could just as easily do that by using that same money to create jobs for you, a decent education and fighting AIDS. The fat cats are instead milking it, while you sit in frustration wondering about your bleak future.
Well, sit no more in frustration! Youth of this country arise and march to protest your destroyed heritage.
March and demand that the people who have destroyed this country be held accountable so that new leaders can come in and create jobs for you. March and demand that you choose to stay with your families or choose to go overseas by YOUR choice, and not because you are forced to go by a group of a hundred irresponsible crooks masquerading as adult leaders.
March and ask for change as the youth of South Africa did so many years ago, as the youth of Ukraine, Zaire, Zambia, Serbia have done recently.
It is time to run, no more.
March and demand a normal youth and normal future for you and your children.
The world is watching. He is finished and he knows it! Bob must go.
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