Ok, Jake and you okes. Cool it. Lissin up. Stilte. Thula. Shuddap, bliksems! Can the suits from Vodacom and MTN at the back put away their free mobiles?

I want to talk about kids and computers and how every kid should have one. Unless they do, they’ll remain peasants in some 19th century backwater.

It is clear to me that the racial, economic and cultural divide that threatens our beloved land and communities is reflected in the access to, and use of, information.

Jake, you and your mates are always going on about being a simple herd boy among simple cows in more simple times, and look at you now, freshly showered and all. Every country needs a rags to riches story, but not everyone needs to go suffer their own. There’s no moral virtue in suffering. Most kids won’t be as lucky as you. In an electronic age, they can’t even read or write.

Once, if you couldn’t use a pencil and paper, you were doomed. You’d go on chatting to the simple cows and goats till your dying day and killing people for being witches. No, this is not racial abuse. My ancestors in Scotland did it too.

Now you’re going to be doomed to making small talk with cows and killing witches if you’re not electronically sussed and connected. It’s the new literacy.

The plan is this. We set up a new tax system to fund computers in every classroom. They’ll have internet connection because the internet has lessons on it and – forgive my mentioning this – our educational system isn’t much cop under you guys. You began by culling teachers’ posts and now you’re closing schools for some world hockey game.

Cost? I didn’t expect you lot to use the word. As Pravin will tell us, six percent of the population pays tax – oh, you recon 10? Gee! We can’t lay more on them.

The haves can pay. That’s you. A special 10 percent tax on the new, undiscounted price of every car over R50 000.

If folks like Vodacom and MTN get caught screwing the customers, their companies and suppliers will have to provide broadband to rural schools. They may not recover the costs from customers.

I reckon, Trevor, that your car translates into some 2 600 pupil-hours a day on a computer. Our former public protector’s R7 million soft landing translates into 2 500 computers providing 10 000 pupil-hours a day. Yes, I’m also suggesting a special 30 percent tax on severance and performance bounties.

The money mustn’t go into the general tax kitty. It’s surrounded by too many fatcats. It will be looked after by people whose fingers will be carefully inspected for stickiness.

This is an investment in your future. Your institutions need computer-literate citizens. Our children will need the jobs and the connection to their, not our, world.

By Robert Grieg, Techno Times, November 3, 2009

What do you think? Add your comments below.

accountability, skills, upliftment