<\/p>\n
Durban \u2014 The National Freedom Party has called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to apologise for referring to unskilled people as stupid while addressing ANC members on Sunday in Mangaung.<\/p>\n
In his address, Ramaphosa referred to unskilled people as iziphukuphuku, a derogatory isiZulu word which means stupid..<\/p>\n
When the president was speaking about joblessness in the country he said: \u201cAkuqashwe abantu abawaziyo umsebenzi; hhayi iziphukuphuku ezingawazi umsebenzi,\u201d which loosely translates to a call for only skilled people to be employed and not stupid individuals that do not have skills. <\/p>\n
The NFP\u2019s secretary-general Canaan Mdletshe said Ramaphosa\u2019s statement was offensive. <\/p>\n
Mdletshe said they viewed the statement as extremely offensive, derogatory and harmful.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot use this word in the same sentence with unemployment or even unskilled,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When Ramaphosa said this, he spoke in isiZulu as he was mixing languages during his address. He was speaking about professionalising the public service and said they want to employ people who can do the job not fools, people who do not know the job.<\/p>\n
Mdletshe added that not having a skill does not render one stupid. He said the reality was that most of the people in the country do not have skills not because of their own making or choice, but the circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Ramaphosa was wrong in using such a word when talking about unemployment levels in this country. While he might have been correct in saying that skilled or qualified people must be employed, we still maintain that referring to unskilled people as stupids or iziphukuphuku is uncalled for,\u201d explained Mdletshe.<\/p>\n
He said they were calling on the president to publicly apologise to those thousands of people who are currently jobless.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn as far as we are concerned, the word is an insult and cannot be used by the sitting president or a leader, worse, using it in public. Ramaphosa must apologise and withdraw the word iziphukuphuku and commit to never use it in future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Daily News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Durban \u2014 The National Freedom Party has called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to apologise for referring to unskilled people as stupid while addressing ANC members on Sunday in Mangaung. In his address, Ramaphosa referred to unskilled people as iziphukuphuku, a derogatory isiZulu word which means stupid.. When the president was speaking about joblessness in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[419,1228,11765,298,426,3830,6434,13634],"class_list":["post-163531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-politics","tag-cyril","tag-happy","tag-nfp","tag-people","tag-ramaphosa","tag-referring","tag-stupid","tag-unskilled"],"yoast_head":"\n