Many ‘80s ‘youth’ jobless

DEAR Mr President,

As a South African citizen I welcomed your ascendency to the highest office in the land, with renewed hope. I was overwhelmed during the State of the Nation Address when you said “thuma

mina”. However, you will need all hands on the deck to bring prosperity to our beloved country.

As we are all aware that our country is faced with many challenges and contradictions, emanating from a painful and shameful past, there is still a lot that needs to be done.

As we navigate these stormy waters we somehow tended to confuse our top priorities.

One of the major challenges in our society is poverty, which is a result of a lack of sustainable income in most households.

The high rate of unemployment is due, amongst other contributing factors, to the high rate of illiteracy and a lack of required skills to obtain gainful employment. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the causes of this are a result of our past in which policies of underdevelopment for the majority of the population were systematically instituted.

It is my belief that instead of increasing welfare or the social development budget, we should embark on a massive skills development programme. All relevant skills for industrialisation and agriculture to ensure food security for generations to come should be prioritised. It cannot be expected that the only education to be pursued should be academic and formal.

Analysts say the reason we have many graduates on the streets is because they lack relevant skills for the job market. How are we going to boost our economy, if we lack the necessary skills for industry? There are many case studies at our disposal from other countries which, after being devastated after the second World War rose to become major industrialised and technologically advanced nations.

Mr President, you are well aware of the suffering of the youth of the 1980s. You saw it firsthand as a leader of the United Democratic Front. They were at the forefront of bringing the past regime to its knees during the mass struggles. In the process they were robbed of their youth and nobody ever thought about the psychological impact and scars they carried into Nelson Mandela’s “rainbow nation”. Many are now among the unemployed multitudes who have not been sufficiently prioritised, not even in programmes designed by government to redress past imbalances.

That is why Mr President, as part of the new deal package, let us upskill our people for sustainable community development. — X Toba, chairperson, Sebenzanathi Community Development (NPO). Mdantsane