Youth challenge to the national conscience
IT CANNOT be easy being a young person in South Africa. Political, economic and social challenges pop up at every corner.
Aside from that, race, ethnicity and identity dominate the discourse in what is very much a nation in the making. That is not a subject unique to South Africa.
The vagaries of history have made world society multi-ethnic and multicultural with few exceptions.
Somalia is probably the only country that can claim to be people of the same ethnicity, faith, language and culture. Somalia is an unmitigated disaster – a failed state at war with itself.
For centuries, Japan, while no stranger to external military aggression, defended its borders against strangers coming in.
Behind Somalia, Japan is probably the most homogeneous society in the world. For more than half a century it is also one of the world’s successful economies.
Yet Japan is a society in decline. It has a rapidly ageing population and a consistent decline in the birth rate. Without young people to shore up its productive capacity and pension funds, there is every prospect that it will calcify.
Our country’s political history in valuing diversity is instructive.
When the ANC was founded in 1912, it united tribes that had mainly met on the battlefield. As a united force, which saw diversity as a strength, it was able to mount a formidable challenge to the colonial and later apartheid state.
When the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congress leadership sat down with the ANC in 1947 to sign the Three Doctors’ Pact, they broke new ground. The concept of non-racialism entered our political lexicon.
In the same decade, the voices of the youth were being heard more and more. The ANC Youth League was founded in 1944 by, among others, Anton Lembede and Nelson Mandela.
Seventeen-year-old Fatima Meer addressed resisters during the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign. She was to go on to play a stellar role in the struggle for South Africa’s freedom, including writing Mandela’s biography, Higher Than Hope, while he was in prison.
When the Defiance Campaign kicked off in 1952, young people from all communities joined the mobilisation against unjust laws.
Youth from, among others, the Natal Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress were among those going door-to-door to obtain the people’s demands that went into the 1955 Freedom Charter. The Natal Indian Youth Congress was another prominent formation in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The banning of the ANC and the PAC in 1960 drove political activity underground. In the latter part of that decade, young people came to the fore again in formations like the National Union of South African Students and South African Students’ Organisation.
The Soweto Uprising dominated the political landscape of the
1970s. While the pupils of Soweto were the focal point, youth resistance was evident all over the country – from Cape Town to East London and Durban.
Young people also ushered in the 1980s with nationwide school boycotts. Youth formations sprung up throughout that decade and were significant in the affiliation to the United Democratic Front and the Mass Democratic Movement.
The post-1994 democratic order saw a lull in political activity among young people. The most vocal campaigns during the 25 years of democracy were the #Rhodesmustfall and #Feesmustfall campaigns, which achieved powerful outcomes, including free higher education for the poor.
Outside the political domain, young people seized the opportunities in sports, the professions and business. Those benefits have, however, not been evenly spread in a country where youth comprise almost 40% of the population. Organising, mobilising and supporting youth is one of the main challenges of contemporary South Africa.
In a powerful call to action, political activist and ANC leader
Ravi Pillay addressed young people recently, saying: “I am a South African. I proudly affirm my roots in the Indian community. I refuse to be inferior to anyone. Steve Biko taught me that. I claim no superiority. My religion teaches me that. I will claim my space. I want to work with all South Africans in uniting our people, in building our country.”