NHLANHLA MOSELE | Free and empower youth to unleash their potential

As we reflect on 30 years of democracy and the present facing young people, we should pause, ponder and ask ourselves if the past three decades have worked for particularly black youth.

For SA youth the prospects are bleak. Recent statistics record a further increase in the youth unemployment rate. In the first quarter of 2023, the expanded definition of youth unemployment stood at 46.5%. In terms of body count, this is 4.9-million young South Africans, mostly young black men and women.

Black youth are told by the older generation that they must appreciate the sacrifices made in the fight for a just and free SA. They are told how fortunate they are to be part of a free and just society. They are pushed to be “politically responsible” and to actively participate in politics and elections.

But the black child today who should be revelling in the bliss of childhood is caught in the failure of the ANC government to deliver economic liberation and cultural restoration. It is an enormous responsibility for a youth that should be free but is not.

If June 16 1976 was a catalyst for the people’s war in the 1980s, then the youth of today have an equally challenging struggle against economic tyranny and obscene inequality. We must be unapologetic in that our priority is to eradicate gross inequality so that all people can live dignified lives.

While the policies of deeply institutionalised racism were overturned 30 years ago, the economic and social impacts of apartheid are still very much present in SA society and have contributed to ever-widening gaps between black and white South Africans in multiple ways.

It is broadly recognised that apartheid was the ultimate form of structural violence that forced hundreds of thousands of black South Africans into informal housing on land that they had no legal claim to.

The core of apartheid policy and power revolved around land. Officially beginning in 1948, black South Africans were stripped of their land and relocated to racially segregated developments far outside the city, where home ownership was practically impossible.

Between 1960 and 1980, 3.5-million people were forcibly removed by police officers from city centres to rural townships. In District Six, an inner-city residential neighbourhood in Cape Town, more than 60,000 people were relocated by the national government to townships about 32kms away after the area was declared “whites only” by apartheid government authorities.

In the aftermath of apartheid, most land was left in the hands of the white elite due to the ANC’s resistance to large-scale land transfers.

The party had originally promised better housing, schools and other services for the poor and underserved black communities, but once elected, party leaders pursued policies to attract and maintain international investment in response to a large decline in economic investment.

ANC leaders were apparently unwilling to pursue any policy that might be considered radical by international investors, including those that might privilege coloured and black communities. In the years before the new millennium, international investors pursued neoliberal economic policies with the stated intent of helping less affluent countries gain a foothold in the global economy.

Between 1994 and 2004, the ANC funded nearly 2-million new homes for black South Africans, but the housing was developed within the existing townships, reinforcing the segregated geographies established under apartheid.

People in these settlements do not legally own the land they live on, have little access to public services and utilities and often endure high costs and travel times to commute to the city for jobs that pay less than R15 a day.

In 1994, there were about 300 townships and informal slums in the country; today, there are nearly 2,700. Stark inequality remains between coastal neighbourhoods in cities like Cape Town and Durban and the townships further inland.

For these reasons, the month of June should remain an important month of commemoration when we honour the youth.

SA’s national priority must be to truly set youth free so that they may develop their full potential. The country’s biggest asset is our youth. They are our future leaders, the ones most capable of promoting progressive change and the ones who hold our economic and political future in their hands.

Today’s youth share similar experiences to the youth of 1976. Even though the spark that ignited their protest was the forced implementation of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in all schools, they understood that theirs was a struggle against social, political and economic tyranny.

Then, as now, our youth live in a society where the rules are written to ensure that the wealthy 1% of the population prosper and grow, while the greater percentage of our youth live in poverty, suffer unemployment and face bleak futures.

SA’s salvation lies in the hands of the masses of ordinary people whose voices must converge and find national expression in a new political system. 

• Mosele is director and head of programmes at Youth Services Agency SA