DEAR Editor,-
One of the municipal workers who cuts and trims the verge outside my residence arrived last week to collect some money for doing a little extra work during a short break.
He is about 40 years old and earns approximately R10 000 a month.
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I was standing in the driveway talking to him while my two small dogs were going about their business sniffing and smelling.
One dog was wearing his winter coat with the word Inja (dog in Zulu) sewn on one side.
Pointing to the word, I asked the worker if he knew what that dog was called and he replied ‘I can’t read. I didn’t go to school.’
I was taken aback and wondered how a country could grow and achieve great things if the population is largely illiterate.
Goodbye to advertising, goods on shelves, quality of life, just to name a few – if the population is largely illiterate.
Corruption, bribery, dictatorship and lawless behaviour become the order of the day and wily foreigners will make off with country’s wealth.
The horizon doesn’t look too promising.
Handing out weed eaters and brush cutters to every poor South African – assuming that the problem of unemployment will be solved this way.
It never will be, unless literacy is urgently addressed – a Herculean undertaking.
PAUL MYERS
Ramsgate
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