Choir teaches us to nurture youth

It takes a lot to impress music personality and talent show judge Simon Cowell. He doesn’t accept mediocre and has broken hearts and budding careers with his harsh criticisms on America’s Got Talent and its British equivalent. But after the Ndlovu Youth Choir, from deep rural Limpopo province, gave their final performance on America’s Got Talent this week, Cowell was reaching for the superlatives.

He told the choir: “You have ended, with that performance, and I really mean this, the best final I have ever sat on in my life.”

Cowell said he always prays that the show will help change people’s lives, and he believes their performance “may have just done it”.

Even though the choir were not the overall winners of the competition, their achievement – on one of the biggest international talent stages – was massive. And, it proved to the Doubting Thomases out there (and there are legions of them) that South Africa truly has the potential to be great and to be a world-beater.

This is just the sort of tonic the country needs at a time of growing depression at political uncertainty, rising crime and a faltering economy.

The choir also did a good job of publicising itself via the media and making some important points in the process.

These teenagers and young adults represent the future of this continent – but they themselves face uncertainty in the years ahead. Youth unemployment is at sky-high levels, not just here but right across Africa; while education is lagging (especially in South Africa) in preparing them for the highly competitive, tech-driven world of the 21st century.

As much as the Ndlovu Youth Choir is a reminder that, together, South Africans are always greater than the sum of their constituent parts, they also urge us to nurture, and not neglect, our young people.