ETHICS:
The Gods must be crazy!
In 1980 filmmaker, Jamie Uys produced a hit comedy, “The Gods must be Crazy”. A Coke bottle is dropped out of a plane flying over the Kalahari.
The hero N!xau, a San (Bushman), picks it up and finds it has many uses, so he assumes it was sent by the Gods. For the San however, there is no such thing as personal property. Everything is shared so when N!xau brings the Coke bottle home to the camp, he find that whereas the women who had always got along now begin fighting over it.
N!xau decides that this thing is evil and he must get rid of it. To do this he has to journey to ‘the end of the world’ to throw it away. This is theme of the movie.
People in most societies have an idea of what is right and what is wrong but they do not always see things (especially property) in the same way!
Take the massive looting in KZN and Gauteng in July 2021. While there were criminal elements involved, a great number of ordinary people took part in the looting. If you asked them if they were thieves, they would deny this and find reasons to justify their actions.
The same goes for corruption. How can leaders who sacrificed and fought for their people, now steal from those very same people? How can they spend lavishly on themselves, knowing that their people are living in abject poverty?
What happened to their sense of what is right and wrong? It comes down to a lack of discipline in our society.
The Oxford dictionary definition includes three key descriptions:
• Rules for conduct
• Maintenance of order
• Chastisement (or punishment)
While our government has been big on legislation, it has ignored the other two components of discipline, especially chastisement. If there is no accountability, people become undisciplined and anarchy follows as we saw in July 2021 and in the way that corruption has continued unabated since the Zondo Commission.
We have to learn from our mistakes. To start, we as South Africans, have to agree on what is right and wrong. That means listening to each other, taking accountability for our actions and holding leaders accountable!
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