Skillfully and with all subtlety, the government is pushing advertisements to citizens to take the COVID 19 jab. However, it tactically informs that there would be unpleasant consequences for the unvaccinated. Such people would lose their rights to things that the state lawfully provides.
However, the price for our freedom and rights as citizens of South Africa cost hundreds of thousands of irrecoverable hours.
The sleepless nights and busy daytime engagements that the founding fathers of modern South Africa spent on strategy for liberty cannot be quantified.
The freedom and rights of the citizens cost the leaders of the struggle much in speech writing, mobilization and rallies.
The Mandelas, Mbekis, Zumas, Sisulus and many others in the early days of the struggle sacrificed the comfort of their homes, and mortgaged personal development opportunities offered them for the higher good of Human Rights.
They spent time in countless rallies, mobilizing and passing across their stand for freedom to the oppressive government.
Individual opportunities for personal gains and acquisitions as allurements to abandon the cause were shunned. They preferred to live in jeopardy of their lives in order to pay for the liberty, rights and good of the masses of South Africans.
The founding fathers would rather identify with the ANC regarded as a proscribed leprous, insurgent organization by the ruling oppressive government of the time, and be arrested and jailed.
For the price of our rights, freedom and equal chances, they preferred to be unjustly kept in police detention than enjoy legitimate seasons of marital conjugation.
Being hunted Night and Day by the security agents of state, they chose to camp in the bushes infested with discomfort, divorced from their homes.
They became strangers to civilization as agents of the state made their homes and fatherland unfit; they became endangered species. All in a bid to secure the rights of the people.
The founding fathers of liberated South Africa galvanized the people a resounding common voice of freedom. As a consequence, majority of South Africans suffered more oppression, deprivation and inhuman treatment.
From Sharpeville to Soweto, sweat, tears and blood became the currency in which liberty was daily negotiated. But the people were undaunted by decades of oppression. Mothers became tearful undertakers of their killed children and regular sights at mass graves.
O, Were Mandela to be here today…! The Madiba, the great icon, who accepted 25 years of incarceration rather than his personal freedom to secure the rights of the people.
Would he have been the leader of the kind of ANC of today that allows trampling on the peoples’ rights on the altar of COVID-19 vaccination?
Would he have agreed with the predatory, mercantilistic West and global pharmaceutical giants to tie opportunities to certificate of vaccination?
Would the Madiba not have fought to maintain these rights in the face of conflicting reports of ineffective vials that warrant unending jabs to keep COVID-19 at bay?
Would Mandela have needed to deny the people opportunities and resort to subtle ‘threatening public notices’ of ‘No jab, No job’?
