Youth needs the village more than ever as the state fails

SA shortchanges its young people by failing to provide them with transitions between school and the workplace that can give them order and discipline; and by failing to assist them with pathways to careers. I had the luck to come across people — the metaphorical villagers — who provided me with both.

One such villager who helped raise me is Omar Badsha, a documentary photographer. Last week Badsha was honoured by the University of Johannesburg with the Ellen Kuzwayo Award for his use of art and photography to document the brutality of apartheid and give voice to the oppressed. A great photograph says more than words.

The other recipient was Rev Paul Verryn for his fight against socioeconomic inequality and poverty.

Badsha has also been awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver (2018) for his commitment to the preservation of SA history, including documenting the lives of anti-apartheid activists and the associated events.

But Badsha has been a responsible villager in other ways too. He has been helping raise young and not-so-young people for decades. He found me in 1983 “working” at the offices of the African Workers Association, a small trade union in Durban run by TS Khumalo. They had both been involved in Durban trade unions until Badsha shifted his focus in 1975 to art and documentary photography.

In return for train and taxi fares, I left home at 6.30am six days a week, to catch a 7am train at Isipingo station heading for the Durban city centre.

Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard has been quoted as saying that life is lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. I did not then understand the importance of the order and discipline the arrangement with the union brought.

It was only much later, especially after reading Julius Wilson, a US sociologist, that it all made sense. The union arrangement gave me some of the habits associated with stable or steady employment. Wilson explains that regular employment provides an anchor for the spatial and temporal aspects of one’s daily life. “It determines where you are going to be and when you are going to be there. In the absence of regular employment, life, including family life, becomes less coherent,” writes Wilson.

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, Wilson adds that persistent unemployment and irregular employment hinder the rational planning of one’s daily life, a necessary condition of adaptation to an industrial economy. Badsha provided me with a pathway into journalism. There were other villagers too. They include Roy Rudden, the Daily News assistant editor, who told me my English was terrible and I must read. He then gave me some of the books sent to the newspaper for reviews. One of them, The Spoilers, a novel by Matt Braun about San Francisco’s underworld and train robberies, has been my companion ever since.

There was also Graeme Addison, from whom my 17year-old self had his first taste of a toasted cheese sandwich. Graeme gently pushed me to get off my butt and start freelancing for Durban-based newspapers.

Badsha bought me a second-hand camera and taught me photography, including how to process black-and-white film and print photos in his studio. That opened avenues for making some money at social gatherings, including birthdays and weddings, as well as community meetings.

I would send some of these photos to the social pages of Ilanga, the Zulu language newspaper. That led to invitations to more gatherings. I also wrote short news reports on some of the meetings. Not all were published, but I got some in, opening a pathway into a career.

DROP OUT

Not everything I did has worked. But it all — successes and failures — has been an enriching experience. As a country we owe young people the opportunity to try to fail, and try again.

But we have failed young people, especially those who drop out of school, or complete matric and do not continue with their studies. There are various initiatives that aim to create transitions and pathways for young people. However, nothing is being done on a scale that matches the size of the problem.

There is also one major complicating factor, due to government failures. The SA economy has been stagnant for more than a decade, meaning opportunities for creating these transitions and pathways are limited. That makes the job of villagers such as Badsha far tougher, and in turn leaves millions of young lives ruined.