The sad reality for SA’s youth

SINCE 1994, the country commemorates the selfless service of youth activists who waged a historic defiance against the apartheid regime in 1976. It’s sad that the economic reform has not done enough to change the lives of young people, particularly the poor.

Corruption is still at the centre of the problem, both in government and the private sector, to the detriment of growth and sustainable development in the country. The struggle facing the present-day youth is the unbridled corruption derailing transformation in society.

The largest constituency remains the historically disadvantaged people and particularly the unemployed youth, some of whom are in prisons and loitering on the streets.

Yet government spends billions to bail-out non-performing entities bedevilled by mismanagement fraught with corruption. In the private sector, certain companies are involved in collusion while others contrive complicated fronting practices to subdue the black majority shareholders in a malicious and deliberate manner.

In many ways, the financial and operational decisions are taken behind closed doors intentionally to undermine corporate governance principles and B-BBEE Act. These corporate citizens show off their huge socio-economic development contributions that have no relation to the reality of young people.

Their interventions hardly reach the economically distressed areas.

This prompts youth migration to the cities because of the belief there’s no meaningful transformation, citing the B-BBEE programme to be benefiting the elites and white monopoly capital as insensitive to the poor.

The truth is that the radical economic transformation agenda would be undermined by the separate development attitude of the private sector, corruption and lack of will by government to deal with the rot hindering service delivery in society. Vosloorus, Ekurhuleni