Daily Dispatch
Avoid repeating youth mistakes
TODAY we reflect on one of the darkest periods of this country’s history when students stood up against a brutal regime who wanted to force the Afrikaans language down their throats without regard for their objections.
The apartheid government played their hand with jackboot viciousness when they brought out the might of armed police to shut down any protest.
The Soweto uprising in 1976 saw students boycott classes and take to the streets to express their disgust over their treatment by a regime who cared nought what the disenfranchised thought.
They paid a heavy price, with scores being shot by the police. It was a turning point in the landscape of a country that was gradually imploding.
To this day the image of a dying Hector Pieterson being carried by a tearful student is the symbol that reminds us of our shameful past.
The youth played a significant role in forcing change in this country and their rousing opposition resonated throughout the world, who demanded that the government institute a democratic order – or face world condemnation, harsh sanctions and become a pariah throughout the western world.
Inevitably, with the statesmanship of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and many other activists, South Africa did change.
We were a free country with one of the best – if not the best – constitutions in the free world. Although there was a promise of a better future, we find ourselves in another dark period.
And the youth, the vulnerable and the poor are paying the price for an uncaring government under the rule of a man accused of allowing a wealthy family to wield undue influence in matters of state.
For the majority, especially the youth, the billions looted from state coffers could have been spent for the good of the people of this country.
We instead can look at youth unemployment with about 38.6% not working and little prospects of finding decent work to pull them out of their poverty-stricken lives.
This hopelessness may well find a home among those who feel their leaders have turned their backs on them.
In this province this year, we have had huge numbers of students again take to the streets as they did 41 years ago, but for a range of issues related to the state’s National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
At King Hintsa TVET College, about 5 000 students lost much-needed learning when they boycotted lectures to protest how the college was disbursing funding from NSFAS. They did return earlier this month on the promise by the Department of Higher Education and Training to provide some additional funding.
It is a gain, but the battle is not only limited to the classroom, with HIV/Aids very much a scourge that still afflicts the youth.
Today is a day to remember, but the current leadership in government does not engender much confidence that our Youth Days will most likely be just all talk and little action.