African National Congress president Jacob Zuma has spoken out about sex and violence in television programmes, saying there is too much of both.
”You sit with your kids and don’t know what to do,” he told members of the Mitchell’s Plain community outside Cape Town, who had gathered at the Lentegeur Community Hall on Saturday morning to hear the ruling party leader speak.
Zuma was almost an hour and a half late for what the provincial ANC billed as an ”opinion makers” meeting, but had all the hallmarks of an election rally, including a brass band, dancers, pounding music and a singer called DLow.
The event was poorly attended. By 9.30am, half-an-hour after Zuma was meant to have arrived, there were less than 30 people in the hall, most of them journalists, party officials and security personnel.
At one point, organisers started packing away chairs in the hall.
By time Zuma started speaking against the backdrop of a huge ANC banner proclaiming ”Mass Mobilisation to Build a Caring Society”, about 200 people were present.
The ANC head highlighted what he described as key issues the party had identified ”which if we succeed in solving, would make a significant difference”.
These included education, crime, corruption and health, matters he has elaborated on at previous venues during his three-day ”public engagement” visit to the Cape.
On education, he said extraordinary measures were needed.
”Investing in education is a wise investment. We will see the results in two or three decades.”
Referring to what he called ”societal education”, he then condemned the exposure of children to violence and sex on television.
”There is too much violence in programmes on TV … Then you wonder why kids are so violent today … [There is] also too much sex on TV.
”As part of societal education, is it the right thing?” he pondered.
The 66-year-old leader also said government needed to act to curb teenage pregnancies, saying these were ”part of the disintegration of
society”.
On crime, he repeated his call for changing the law to deal more harshly with those who commit it.
”We might end up doing things that are a little bit harsher,” he warned, but did not elaborate.
Sharing the platform with Zuma were senior provincial ANC members, including party provincial chairperson Mcebisi Skwatsha and Western Cape premier Lynn Brown, among others.
ANC officials were keen to explain away the poor attendance at the event by stressing it was not a public meeting.
”It was never the idea to have a public meeting,” ANC spokesperson Lionel Adendorf emphasised, saying it was an opportunity for Zuma to meet religious, business and civil society leaders from the community.
ANC Western Cape MPL Kent Morkel said: ”The intention is the president can engage with the opinion makers of Mitchell’s Plain.”
Adendorf said the event had been delayed by an ”emergency meeting” that Zuma had to attend, but could not say what the emergency was.
Zuma is due to wrap up his Western Cape visit with a rally in Langa on Sunday afternoon.
The province is likely to prove a tough battleground for the ruling party in next year’s national and provincial elections. Five years ago,
the ANC garnered just over 46% of the vote in the region.
Analysts say they could well lose it to an opposition coalition in 2009. – Sapa