Cosas defends Zuma march, calls for voting age to be lowered to 7

JOHANNESBURG. The Congress of South African Students has defended last week's action in which it forced schoolchildren to leave their classes and march in support of Jacob Zuma, saying that education was no longer a necessity in South Africa. "Many of us don't have a secondary education," said a Cosas spokesman, "and it hasn't hurt our chances of getting high-paying jobs in Government."

Hundreds of schoolchildren were rounded up by Cosas in township schools around Johannesburg and taken by bus and train to the city centre where they protested Zuma's innocence by sucking lollipops, braiding each others' hair, and writing inspirational messages about Beyonce Knowles in TipEx on their blazers.

Spokesman Facebrick Ndlovu dismissed criticisms that the march should have taken place on a Saturday instead of a school day, and also that Cosas was squandering taxpayers' money.

"I have personally been told by many of our child cadres that they felt the march was a success largely because it happened on a school day," he said.

"In fact they have demanded that Cosas stage a similar march every Friday, and perhaps some Thursdays as well, in order to fully enflame their patriotic zeal."

He added that the pupils had also asked for "donuts, maybe a DJ, and a jumping castle, also to increase their awareness of the injustice facing Comrade Zuma".

"As for the issue of the funds we used, we will not apologize. The people who pay tax are mostly those who have passed Matric, and clearly this is not our demographic.

"Nobody even vaguely connected with Cosas has passed Matric, or come close on a second or third attempt, and we are determined to uphold those traditions in the coming years."

He conceded that most of the children had not known why they had left their schools or what the march was about, but he denied that disrupting their exam preparation was helping to produce a generation of uncritical voting fodder.

"Even if I knew what a fodder was, I would deny this," said Ndlovu.

"We are simply helping nurture and develop new skills that are in desperately short supply in this country."

He said that these skills included "voting for Msholozi and writing protest manifestos in TipEx on the doors of public toilets".

Meanwhile Cosas has called on the government to lower the voting age to 7.

National Chairperson Einstein Sodwana said that children needed to "have the burden of education lifted from them so that they can be free to fully engage in the revolution".

"If our Grade One's can vote, why expend resources on controversial and damaging activities like teaching them how to read or do sums?

"In our view we need a much more nurturing education system for our little ones, whereby all they do at school is Show And Tell.

"We show them a picture of Msholozi, and tell them to vote for him."

source: http://www.hayibo.com/