Johannesburg — THE private escapades of President Jacob Zuma make him a suitable representative of our licentious constitution, and of our morally indifferent and prostrate society. His behaviour reflects the tattered state of the nation and marks the collapse of its moral fabric.

The moral destruction began with a ruling by the Human Rights Commission under Barney Pityana that was based on the "right to education" and the usual blinding claptrap about the legacies of apartheid. The commission ruled that pregnant schoolgirls should be allowed to remain at school, thus endorsing, encouraging and accelerating teenage and extramarital pregnancies.

Though there were strong objections when the commission held its mock public hearings, it granted these "rights" as predetermined. This decision was to become the beginning of the moral holocaust now afflicting our society, from pupil to president.

This matter - of such grave consequence for individuals, families, morality and culture, as well as for healthcare and the economy - did not reach Parliament, which now approves a bloated and ballooning "social development" budget.

This policy, along with what now appears to be the official revitalisation of polygamy, is meant to stoke black naissance (camouflaged as the African renaissance, or "human rights") so as to spawn a decadent and dependent rabble and, perhaps, for the resulting black flood to drown or flush whites out. It's primitive racialism without the benefit of positive racial self-determination or developmental patriotism.

Former president Thabo Mbeki cunningly bypassed Parliament and passed this insidious task on to the commission, which was pliable, cabalistic and chaired by a fellow tribesman who was later rewarded with a university sinecure - and who lately sought, fittingly, an Anglican archbishopric.

So now the education department makes queens of pregnant school pupils while female teachers are enjoined to serve as comforting mid-maids. The Department of Health then delivers the scum laude results (the regime's outstanding delivery), placing an ever-increasing burden on our health systems. The Department of Social Development, through the South African Social Security Agency, pays for the deliveries of mainly repeating teen moms.

All legal, social and moral restraints, including sports, cultural, recreational and religious activities, have been curtailed at schools. Statutory rape charges are disregarded; parents and teachers are restrained, and even jailed, should they dare to exercise discipline. Yet the young are protected or leniently treated for delinquency.

Now once vibrant schools and communities are forlorn victims of a moral scorched-earth policy, a planned devastation to suppress their spirit lest they confront a destructive and irresponsible regime.

Struggling and promising school pupils get insufficient attention, but the maternity girls receive the royal treatment. Legitimate educational issues and interests are downgraded, generating a failing education system.

The culture, gender and youth commissions, all chaired by Mbeki's tribal cognates at moments of crucial policy formulation, are silent, despite the carnage in their constituencies. Clerical voices, who invoked "morality" to justify "struggle", are too, too silent in this Sodom and Gomorrah-like scenario.

The rot is very costly. The Department of Social Development gets more than R100bn a year. This merely assists the black population to explode, with the byproducts of extramarital parenthood, family and social disintegration, AIDS, poverty, unemployment and crime.

It also helps entrench the African National Congress. From liberation to looting is a logical progression for movements that exhibit such poverty of thought and paucity of action.

The government promotes extramarital child production. Being the foremost naissance man - 20 children, with more coming through wives and friends' offspring? - and being indifferent to or perhaps stoking AIDS, Zuma deserves the Thabo Mbeki Award and the regime's terminal life presidency.

Mabogoane is a freelance writer.