This year’s commemoration of Youth Month happened ON the back of youth unemployment data that painted a bleak picture in as far as the future of our youth is concerned.
Every year, when bodies like Statistics South Africa disseminate the youth unemployment data, armchair critics are quick to respond with a tired adage saying South Africa is sitting on a time bomb without suggesting any solutions.
Truly speaking however, I concur with the armchair critics. We are sitting on a time bomb. Unemployment leads to poverty and it moves the posts of inequality even wider.
Considering the proliferation of rampant corruption in the mix, this almost provides a formula for a bomb. Adding poverty, mixing it with inequality, perceived corruption and youth unhappiness as a result of unemployment, creates an explosion of atomic proportions.
Considering the youth of 1976 and the Fees Must Fall Movement of 2015, I am convinced that South African youth are capable of explosive acts of destruction. While these youths were fighting for their injustices within their zeitgeists, the present cause is unemployment, and it is detonating the bomb as we speak. The writing is on the wall.
Past experiences of youth unhappiness and destruction have always given me a precedent. For example, I refer to March 7, 1965, during the Bloody Sunday massacre when the black youth in the US state of Alabama were marching against the injustices of the laws that oppressed minorities in the country. This led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allowed all the citizens to practice their universal suffrage, including black minorities.
The youth march at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the Arab Spring of 2011 are also clear examples.
This year’s government’s Youth Month theme was accelerating youth economic emancipation for a sustainable future. With this theme, the government sought to bring together multi-sectoral government, private sector, and civil society partners to present real-time opportunities to young people and engage in a dialogue to address the barriers they face.
The Youth Dialogue on Democracy that was held by the National Rural Youth Service Corps of the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development in Dunnottar near Nigel was one of the examples of government’s efforts aimed at engaging the youth.
The event built a dialogue on topical issues such as youth voter apathy, unemployment, mental health, gender-based violence, landlessness and substance abuse.
All the youth who participated in the dialogue built a case in terms of how they are affected by each topic, how the youth themselves think they negatively contribute to each topic and suggest possible solutions. Subject matter experts on each topic were invited to give advice and suggest solutions.
For me, this formula will help because it enables the government and the youth to trade-off in terms of what the youth want and how they need to change their behaviour in helping government assist them. This brought hope in how government is tackling socio-economic issues faced by the youth.
In the deliberations, the fact that the youth mention and acknowledge their negative contribution to the problems clearly showed that the youth see themselves as important stakeholders who can influence change without embarking in undesirable and destructive mass protests that destroy infrastructure and result in many fatalities.
Subject matter experts coming from the Independent Electoral Commission, Department of Health, Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development and Life line gave advice on how to register on the national unemployment database, how agricultural land is acquired, what to do if you are suicidal and how the youth can deal with substance abuse and gender-based violence.
This bottom down approach creates a quid pro quo approach where the youth feel that government is listening to them, and conversely, the dialogue creates a platform for government to hear from the youth what changes they want see and how it should be done.
This also gives government an idea on how to draft policy that is responsive to the needs of the youth.
Themba Mzula Hleko is an Honours graduate in Media Studies at Unisa
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