Where is our moral compass as a nation?

South Africa is going through a period where nothing is sacred and where our morals are negotiable.

Standards and norms of public decency seem adrift.

I am a child of the ’80s. My childhood, to an extent even my adult life, was moulded by my parents and their guidance, leadership, norms and values.

We are now in a time when corruption does not disturb us and sex scandals, where ministers share girlfriends, are Sunday tabloid fodder.

Schools are now labour wards as teenage pregnancy continues to rise.

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Presidents and their families are sold to the highest bidder; femicide and infanticide are soaring; and child rapists confess to drug consumption with their mothers – a mother introducing their child to the dangers of drug abuse.

Where is our moral compass as a nation? And if this is where we are, where are we headed?

A few months ago I heard someone on the radio say that what South Africa needed was not law and order but order and law.

This thought has not left me. You see, how can you maintain the law if you have no order to begin with?

On paper we may have laws, but in reality we have a country that runs on auto-pilot.

Perfect way to prove this, the former public protector that had to go to court to have her powers enforced against the president, of all people.

If the president violates the laws of the country – which he believes can be and should be amended to suit his convenience – how are the rest of us meant to abide by these laws?

We cannot have laws that are merely decorative. Our laws must be rooted in truth and free from passion.

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There must be no special treatment for the affluent or undue sympathies for those of disadvantaged backgrounds.

The law should be consistent, not gender or racially biased, and there should be no white privilege.

Once we conduct ourselves in an orderly fashion, we will be able to uphold the law, regardless of who the perpetrator may be.

We cannot as a nation continue this way. But before we engage the country, we must start with our families, the men and women in the mirror.