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Yep, it’s official. The world has gone crazy. When Lady Gaga wore her meat dress, the globe got ready to accept Donald Trump as the US president.
When Judge Nkola Motata was drunk as a sailor, South Africa got ready to accept Mogoeng Mogoeng as the chief justice.
Unsurprisingly, of all the pressing matters in this country, the Constitutional Court chose to listen to a case on smoking dagga, and ruled that you can smoke as much as you like, as long as you do it in private.
Meanwhile, a great injustice is happening to millions of South African children every day and nobody is saying a thing.
This horrible oppression shows the extent to which parents neglect the happiness of their children.
Oh, there used to be a time when people said it took a village to raise a child.
Those were the good days, when adults stopped to ask children how they were doing and then the little angels would talk about the things that bothered them.
Like when my friend’s daughter told her grandmother: “Gogo, your daughter is very, very naughty.” She said about her mother: “She grabs daddy by the tie and then kisses him, making us late for crèche. You must talk to her.”
These days, adults don’t care. They are more concerned about what is happening on their social-media timelines and on asinine reality TV shows. So children are deprived of adult friends – that one person who listens to their burning complaints.
They say charity begins at home and, after this, you will hopefully make sure that this problem is taken all the way to Parliament, and that legislation is passed to protect the children against this scourge.
Unless this problem is solved, our children will not grow up to detest racism. They will not understand diversity, and the nation will be the poorer for it.
You may take it lightly, because you are an adult, but this is a big problem.
For years now – for many years – there has been a gradual monocolourisation of amaskopas, that formerly colourful popcorn bought on street corners, which brings happiness to millions of children.
Amaskopas are now predominantly yellow – all the colours of the rainbow have disappeared. Those eye-closing, luscious and tasty greens … Oooh … those sumptuous reds are practically gone. The rare blue has disappeared. Could the yellow dye be cheaper, perhaps?
No, ladies and gentlemen, childhood should not become a victim of economic austerity.
Talking about austerity, a packet of amaskopas has become smaller and smaller, which is worse than Coca-Cola reducing the contents of a can from 340ml to 330ml, and now they sell you a sip of only 300ml.
Selling amaskopas at 10c a packet was daylight robbery, but, at a suffocating R3, it is the pillaging of the young.
Everyone knows that the rand is weak and that the oil price is high, so everyone must share the pain. But if adults paid enough attention to the needs of their own children, they would find alternatives.
They could encourage abomkhozi, the sellers of amaskopas, to stop using plastic bags. They could use a cup like in the old days and wrap amaskopas in old newspaper.
At the moment, newspapers are used only to wrap mostly amagwinya and snoek.
First, they came for the red cake – I did not speak out because I did not like the red cake. Then they came for sweets called amacadbury. I did not speak out for amacadbury because I liked amahumbugs.
Then they came for amahumbugs and I didn’t care because I liked amahalls. Then they came for the polony and, again, I said nothing.
Now they are coming for amaskopas, quietly and systematically.
Somebody must speak out.
Amaskopas cannot and must not be one colour. Every colour inside a packet of amaskopas brings its own piece of a smile to a child’s face.
Let us fight bigotry early in our children’s lives.
Let them taste diversity – bring back more colour to amaskopas.
Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency
