Youth day emptiness
The three things any child needs most are a safe, stable family home with a mother and father; a sound education; and good prospects of getting a job. As Youth Day came last week, 41 years after the youth uprising in Soweto sounded the death knell for apartheid, millions of our young people are denied all three. It is nonsense that nothing has improved since 1994. But it is true that a multitude of young people have been betrayed by the bad politics and callous attitudes of their elders.
This is miserable for the youth. It is also dangerous for society. In any country and any age, a large number of fatherless, jobless, ill-educated young males threaten the social order with possible violence and disorder. This is already beginning in SA now.
The politicians made their usual vacuous, dishonest speeches. The closest any came to a concrete suggestion for improvement was Julius Malema, who said we need “factories not malls”. I agree. He didn’t tell us how this could happen.
The breakdown of black family life is perhaps our most profound problem. Twenty-three years into democracy, only a third of black children have a father in their household. Why? I never hear the politicians addressing this.
An obvious way to improve our fortunes is to dismiss our corrupt president and his corrupt ministers. It was cheering that Zuma was booed by schoolchildren during his tedious speech. But what are opposing politicians offering?
On our appalling education system, I was dismayed to read the speech of Cyril Ramaphosa in May to the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). He is a leading contender to replace Zuma. Here was his chance to tell the truth about how Sadtu is wrecking the education of poor black people. Everyone knows this, including Sadtu, whose teachers send their own children to private and former model C schools.
Instead, he lied and praised Sadtu to the skies, saying it was “returning the ANC to its founding values of service and selflessness”.
He obviously values the political support of Sadtu more than the welfare of our children.
On our catastrophic unemployment, the ANC seems to be trying to make it worse.
The new mining charter will deter investment in our mines, already desperately low for the country with the world’s greatest mineral treasure, and kick thousands more mineworkers on to the scrapheap.