Mar­tin George

?The re­cent killings of school­child­ren and teenagers among us have been rather dis­turb­ing, but is, per­haps, re­flec­tive of much deep­er-root­ed prob­lems in the so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly when one con­sid­ers that the per­pe­tra­tors have, in the main, been oth­er chil­dren, too. So this is now like a chill­ing and fright­en­ing re­make of a line in King Austin's song Progress, in which he lament­ed the prob­lem of teenage preg­nan­cies by say­ing: "Chil­dren mak­ing chil­dren to be­come a part of this grow­ing mass, and when I re­al­ly think of it, the price of progress is high." If King Austin were to com­ment on so­ci­ety to­day, he would sing: "Chil­dren killing chil­dren, so it is not safe to go to class, and when I, re­al­ly think of it, the price of ne­glect is high"

Whirl­wind of vengeance

We have been feed­ing, nur­tur­ing and main­tain­ing this mon­ster among us for way too long, and we are now as a na­tion reap­ing a whirl­wind of the vengeance of Moko which is com­ing back to haunt us in the form of in­no­cent-look­ing young­sters, dressed in school uni­forms, with dag­gers, in­stead of books, in their school­bags, con­tempt and dis­re­spect for oth­ers and for hu­man life as their call­ing cards. Many of these are ac­tu­al­ly the ba­bies of the chil­dren mak­ing chil­dren that King Austin lament­ed about and these nice, sweet, lit­tle ba­bies have grown up, flour­ished and thrived to be­come ba­by mon­sters among us.�

No sense of right or wrong

You would see them on the streets seem­ing nor­mal, laugh­ing, hap­py, play­ful, hav­ing fun. But then, just like that–with the flick of a switch–a vi­o­lent anger and rage spring forth for the slight­est thing, the tini­est in­frac­tion, and the small­est, tri­fling of­fence. Sud­den­ly, this nice, smil­ing teenag­er be­comes an un­con­trol­lable mon­ster, who has this thirst and blood­lust to avenge, to wreak hav­oc, to get even, to teach some­one a les­son–"I don't like the way you look­ing at me, boy. I go stab you up." Out comes the knife, no thought, no pause to con­sid­er the enor­mi­ty of what he's about to do, no sense of right or wrong, good or evil; just the flash of a blade, plunged in­to a chest, and to­mor­row's news head­lines are, once again, writ­ten in blood on the streets of the na­tion.

When did our chil­dren, our teenagers, our lit­tle ones get to be so un­think­ing, so un­feel­ing, so cold, cal­lous and cal­cu­lat­ing? When and where did we lose them? Or did we first lose their par­ents one gen­er­a­tion ago, so that there now seems to be ab­solute­ly no hope of these present teenagers ever find­ing them­selves? Is it that their par­ents, when they know them or see them, or get to in­ter­act with them, are not even ca­pa­ble them­selves of teach­ing, nur­tur­ing and in­still­ing good val­ues, ideals and prin­ci­ples in these kids? Do some of these par­ents even know some of these things, or do they even care?�

Mael­strom of ne­glect

We are wit­ness­ing a mael­strom of ne­glect of our na­tion's chil­dren and teenagers in alarm­ing num­bers, chil­dren whose re­al­i­ty and whose dai­ly lives are so far re­moved from the civilised, gen­teel ex­is­tence most of us know and ac­cept to be the norm, that we some­times can­not even be­gin to con­cep­tu­alise the fact that for so many of these teenagers, life is, in­deed, "short, sharp and brutish," and the tragedy is that they know this and ac­cept it. When you have teenagers who are marked for death be­cause of cross­ing some­one, or be­cause of the ac­tiv­i­ties they have been in­volved with, ei­ther on their own or as part of a gang, there seems to be pre­cious lit­tle that those of us from the oth­er side of the di­vide can teach them, guide them or en­light­en them on. They have grown up so fast, with­out prop­er parental guid­ance and con­trols, that they have, pos­si­bly, seen more of cer­tain as­pects of life than we will ever know or imag­ine.

They are non­cha­lant and jad­ed about life and non­cha­lant and jad­ed about death. It's all the same to them: "Small ting; a man get wipe out last night, but he know his time was com­ing." They are so ca­su­al with their words, ca­su­al with their lives and ca­su­al with their deaths, it's all a part of the vi­cious cir­cle of life in the ghet­to that Singing San­dra croons about. So where do we be­gin to stop the rot? How do we be­gin to pull back these teens from the brink, from the edge? We don't wish to give up and adopt the Mor­gan Job so­lu­tion, where he says that when a tree is bent like this, all you can do is cut it down. We don't wish to ac­cept El­la An­dall's prog­no­sis that there is among us an en­tire "Miss­ing Gen­er­a­tion," but we have to ac­cept the fact that we're fac­ing a hell of a prob­lem here which may re­quire, not the fi­nal so­lu­tion a la Mor­gan Job, but would cer­tain­ly re­quire some prun­ing and cut­ting here and there.

Some of our ra­dio sta­tions have moot­ed the idea of na­tion­al ser­vice as a sort of dis­ci­pli­nary and char­ac­ter re-shap­ing boot camp, and there may be some mer­it in this idea, but it al­so car­ries with it tremen­dous de­mer­its, too. There's been talk of na­tion­al home­work cen­tres as a type of af­ter-school home­work nan­ny sys­tem, and there's been talk of try­ing to en­gage youths more in arts, sports and cul­ture. All of these are nice-sound­ing ideas, but we as yet do not see that ur­gency from the Gov­ern­ment meet­ing and treat­ing with this prob­lem with the ur­gency it de­serves. We will con­tin­ue to ig­nore it to our per­il and fur­ther detri­ment, as the sto­ries of chil­dren killing chil­dren would be­come the norm, rather than the ex­cep­tion, and un­less we soon con­front and seek to tame the mon­ster among us, we will all–whether we like it or not–pay the price of ne­glect.