Youth should form its own party

● No appeal for the younger generation in established groupings

When those in my generation look up to public figures, political parties and affiliations for social security or for political change, we are left with a stark choice.

On the one hand is the populist rhetoric of Julius Malema, armed with propaganda tools that have been used by other politicians in the past and who also dressed in red, with the slightest hint of militarism in the fashionable beret he dons.

Other parties follow Malema’s suit, such as the Black First Land First party.

Then, on the other hand, there is the more “tolerant”, more “centrist” party for the youth to look to, the DA.

It is a movement with a foothold in the Western Cape, but with no real strong voters to rely on – they are on average white, middle class, toeing-the-line type of folk with no push for political urgency.

And as the parties’ internal conflicts air, through the media, with scuffles and shouting matches in parliament, and by the common voter demonstrating in the street, the common denominator will be that the older members of SA parties are elected to real decision-making status in the government, municipality and other institutions.

And they are horrendously inefficient in their tasks.

So I ask my generation, where is our will to stand to- gether and push for political change based on our own agenda?

Whether your parents vouched for the ANC or the NP in those unsure days, why have we not affiliated publicly to one day ensure the stability of our country, once our politicians and public figures are part of the history books that we’ll be teaching to our children?

Why do we always turn to the old and comfortable insti- tutions of the DA and the ANC that have been around for as long as the youth can remember, or turn towards the rise of the far left of the EFF, instead of rallying to the cause of a new, youth-led party?

There we can battle the other social problems we face as the youth, the issues facing other students and pupils, such our growing desensitisation of rape and crime, the #Feesmustfall movement that is ongoing and the role we will be playing in our economy when the time comes.

We are dividing ourselves into white or black, coloured or Indian or Khoi, especially with the ongoing debate on land expropriation, and we ask ourselves who does the land belong to?

But always, in every nation that has ever existed, the land will always be inherited by its youth, so let us unite.