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| DADDY'S GIRLS: President Jacob Zuma's daughters, from left, Phumzile, Thuthu, Dudu and Gugu |
The Metro FM news bulletin announced last
week that the government is set to launch a campaign to encourage people to
have fewer children and encourage birth control measures. Now in my
understanding, our government is led by the ANC, which is led by our President
Jacob Zuma, who at this point happens to have just over 20 children.
Please do not misunderstand my concern to be
that of criticism against the President and his ‘traditional’ lifestyle, but
rather as a sincere concern about the way our traditional way of learning and
modelling behaviour has been ignored in all these campaigns.
This reminds me of the ‘one girlfriend, one
boyfriend’ campaign advocated by Julius Malema, who was at the time under the
leadership of our president. Needless to say that it seems to me that we have
become a hypocritical nation, legitimising behaviour from certain well esteemed
individuals while condemning the same behaviour when it involves by our general
population.
Being a member of this general population I
know at this point that due to my financial situation of lack of a financial
situation, I cannot bring children into this world. Children are not only an
expense, but they also require a certain level of emotional maturity from the
parent. Parents are role models for their children, and it is likely that if
you behave in a certain way, your children are likely to do the same; it is
called social learning and modelling. Similarly, citizens of this country may
not see why they are constantly being told to have fewer children, use family
planning options when our President does the opposite.
This whole ‘do as I say not as I do’ thing
does not work in South Africa as we have seen and we should know by now that
people are not as ignorant as we may think they are. People are aware of what
happens around them and as part of forming their own identities, may pattern
their thoughts, feelings and actions after the President who serves as a role
model for many South African citizens. You ask a few young people what they
would like to do when they grow up and they tell you they want to be the
president, not because they want to assume his position, but rather because
they want to be like “him”.
So before we go on about what needs to be
done to change people’s behaviour and how we can stop them from having too many
babies, let us start at the top, let us ensure that people have role models
that will model the kind of behaviour we advocate to ensure that we get the
results we hope to get.
This post was first published on TimesLIVE on 13 July 2012 and can be viewed on the following link:
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