Jan 31 2010
Its called social welfare Mr President…
I’ve read with interest some of the debates around Jacob Zuma and his multiple wives and now I hear he is up to 20 children… the last one being broken in a story in the Sunday Times and apparently not involving one of his six wives.
Earlier this week he defended himself in Davos by correctly pointing out that Western culture itself is not necessarily “right” or “better” than his culture. I agree 100% - the Americans and the Europeans are no better or “civilised” than people on the African continent.
However and this is where basic education separates those cultures - if you have 20 kids somebody has to look after them. Assuming for the moment that these kids of his will get a standard South African education - i.e. at a decent model C school - then simple arithmetic shows that he cannot afford them on his pretty small presidential salary.
But then the way I read this - he is not responsible for looking after these kids - that responsibility effectively falls to either the tax-payer or the families of the unmarried wives.
Let’s strip out the tax-payer angle for the moment because you can’t put a real cost on that and its just going to encourage racist debate which is non-productive.
Let’s take the Sunday Times “story” from this morning where the daughter of football magnate Irvin Khosa is purported to have had a daughter fathered by the president.
They’re not married (sends a great message to male society that you can get somebody pregnant but not take legal responsibility for it). By the time you reach 20, you can’t fund its education off your own bat so I’d assume that Khosa and his daughter will take financial responsibility for this child.
In her case she probably has the financial resources to look after this child. But what about when they don’t have the resources - the kids become too expensive and they start creating huge strains on the social welfare system. More kids in childrens homes and orphanages which in turn builds up to bigger social welfare issues.
I’ve seen that first hand so maybe the President should see what actions like this are doing to society. And if you want to turn around and say “That’s my culture and that’s the way its done,” I’ll turn around to you and say BULLSHIT.
Your culture or any other culture wants to have excess - whether it is money or children - then there are going to be social problems. We see it in South Africa - no jobs, too many kids to classes, too many child-headed or single parent homes. Those then knock on to other parts of society.
Just think like a normal South African for once and consider what your actions are doing and the message it sends to other members of the community.

