A recent South African newspaper addressed the unsanitary conditions in Limpopo’s government schools, and since I live in Limpopo and teach once a week in a school there, I thought I’d add my two cents—which is worth about 22 Rand cents these days. So what I have to say is valuable.

I do not disagree with what the problem is. Mr. Milambo, the concerned parent, is certainly correct that “toilets are scary places.” I rarely see the youth at our government school use the bathrooms, complete with shattered windows, broken pipes and feces on the floor and walls. And this is with running water. The issue is why.

The parent said much more work needed to be done, which I can only assume means—much more work to be done by the government. The same government that gives his children a dozen years of free education and the right to pass grade twelve with just a 30% score is now to blame for the dirty toilets as well.

But only a small part of this story is in the light, while the truth is out there somewhere relaxing in the shade getting ignored. So before looking at the toilets, lets take a look at the classrooms. There you will find walls layered in graffiti, broken doors, busted lights, and desks with “F*&@ You” carved deep into the wood. I’m guessing the principal didn’t do this. At our village school, between the toilet rooms there are mutilated chairs stacked three meters high. But writing an article about that brings the guilt too close to the students—and then the parents—so the story channels toward the toilets instead.

Moreover, suppose we visited the toilets at the student’s homesteads? I have visited hundreds of homes in our village and the vast majority have outdoor pit toilets. Most of these, by the way, were built and paid for by the government. And what do you think we would find? Not places of care and beauty, but most often disheveled and foul-smelling shacks. Could it be that the students are acting from morning and afternoon at school the same way that they are acting in the evening at home?

Filthy toilets in government schools should not surprise us. That students do not care for property they did not work or pay for is a microcosm of why socialism does not work. The answer to the problem here is not that government should give more, but that they should give less. And it’s not only unbelievers that want more government cookies; Christians are drinking in these worldly assumptions from a fire hose.

Until we realize that more personal character, more parental responsibility, and less government means cleaner toilets, the only place these students will help themselves will be in the bush.

The always popular “Starvation”. Sometimes the people here name the child after what they are feeling at the time.

At our stomping grounds, we have quite a variety of names, including Miserable, Loudness, and Happy Boy. The name of the most prominent man in our village is “Xidonkana”, meaning “little donkey.” The West has “A boy named Sue.” The Tsongas have “A man named Honey Bee.”

The names in my colleague’s neighboring village surpass us: Hitler, Kill Me, and Froggy.

But as Joseph Norwood points out in “A Boy Named Humiliation”, the Puritans had their own fondness for unconventional names, both strange (Ashes, Abuse-not, Dust), cruel (No-merit, Humiliation, Sorry-for-sin), and virtuous (Tenacious, Trinity and Verity). 

Norwood concludes:

The annual male circumcision school came through our village recently. Here is a video our church put together on this sacred African tradition.

Andrew Verrijdt in his recent Mail and Guardian article “Teens Have Sex, Get Over It” has plainly yet painfully summarized the pervasive mentality among most South Africans regarding teen sex.

Verrijdt’s assumption is that teenagers simply will have sex, and the best adults can hope for is that it be “safe” sex. As Hollywood, Bollywood, and Follygood have well taught us, waiting until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse is an unthinkable notion. In fact, sex is so associated with teenage life that Verrijdt calls South Africa’s attempts to control underage promiscuity “attempting to legislate away the act of being a teenager.”

His title is telling: “Teens Have Sex. Get Over It.” If by “get over it” he means, “don’t hide your head in the sand, adults. Recognize the problem and address it”, then I have no qualms. But that is not what he is saying. For him, “get over it” equals “accept it.” But then I ask, what would stop Verrijdt from saying: “Teens do drugs. Get over it”? Or, “Teens cheat on exams. Get over it”?

We are beginning to see the quicksand Verrijdt has fallen into, as have all the cultural left that want to throw sexual restraint to the wind and yet still make moral judgments. He says that “adult contact with children is bad” and it is OK for youth to engage in “age-appropriate sexual experimentation.” But why is adult contact with children bad? Says who? And who should decide which age is appropriate for sexual liaisons? Verrijdt never tells us but does hint at the formula he uses to define sexual morality: Consent. If partners agree (regardless of age or gender), why not?

Al Mohler has observed:

The children of the sexual revolution have gravitated toward a sexual morality that boils down to consent. In its essence, this sexual morality holds that anything consenting individuals do with each other sexually is beyond moral censure. And anything means anything. An ethic of consent is all that remains after the ethic of moral rules is discarded in the name of liberation.

So consent is the idol to which all other moral issues must bow. Mpho can sleep with his 16-year old neighbor, if she consents. Baloyi can add Mamayila, Maria, and Lacy as wives to his harem as long as they agree. Steve may have relations with a consenting Stanley. And Thandi can abort the baby in her womb as long as the child…wait. Scratch that example.

Then there are his comments about condoms. Continue reading →