Targeting youth needs

I’VE been listening to many people who continue to refer to June as “youth month”, celebrating and commemorating the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising.

I agree, this historic epoch cannot be forgotten. It is of cardinal importance for it to be commemorated.

However, it is equally important to examine the current challenges confronting the youth of today. There is a “dialectic relationship in the phases of struggles”.

The youth of 1976 fought against the brutal apartheid system that sought to impose Afrikaans as the medium of instruction.

The youth of today is confronted by poverty, unemployment and income inequality that leads to cultural backwardness in some nodes in the country.

There are some students who passed matric and have ambitions but are financially excluded from institutions of higher learning, therefore such dreams cannot be realised.

There are some who went to university and acquired degrees but are unemployed. Some young people are dying of curable diseases and living in conditions of squalor with no hope of seeing their lives transformed for the better.

In acknowledging the progress made by government after the advent of democracy, the following issues needs to be revisited:

Serious consideration must be given to radically transforming the economy of the country in order to make conditions conducive for people, in particular the black youth, to access jobs;

Relevant stakeholders must come together across the social and political divides to address radical economic transformation;

The proximity of youth service centres to youth in the rural areas needs to be prioritised so that young people in both remote rural areas and semi-urban areas can get information;

Much financial support must be allocated to businesses initiated by young people. This has to be prioritised by government, along with simplifying the tender system.

Many of those involved in service delivery protest are young people. Because they are not working there is all the time for them to be swayed by people with interests outside of youth-centred economic development.

Young people are part of the anatomy of a revolution. They need to be prioritised. The celebration of the strides of the 1976 generation must talk to the economic liberation of the current generation. — Scara Njadayi, regional secretary of the ANC in Sarah Baartman region