Power to parents
The crisis of South Africa’s youth is laid bare every day in Grahamstown and across this fair land.
In the Western Cape High Court, 22-year-old Henri van Breda is accused of the 2015 killing his father, mother and brother and severe injury of his teenage sister in a brutal axe attack he blames on a balaclava-clad intruder. In Gauteng, 27-year-old Sandile Mantsoe maintains his innocence against accusations of brutally murdering girlfriend Karabo Mokoena, necklacing her body and dousing it in acid. Mokoena was just 22.
In Grahamstown, Thembani ‘Zion Eyes’ Onceya, a local poet, rapper, and citizen journalist overcame incredibly long odds to make it to Rhodes University. Respected for his perseverance and liked by fellow artists and students, Onceya along with several relatives is accused of torturing and murdering Thembelani Qwakanisa on 2 October 2016.
It’s tragic that Onceya, Van Breda and Mantsoe, instead of being busy building their lives and careers through study and work, are instead facing charges relating to these brutal cases.
Beyond these three young men, the bigger tragedy is that the age group they fall in (teenagers-35) faces modern-day crises many are ill-equipped to deal with.
Young men in South Africa (although our country is not unique) face peer pressure for unique identities through binge drinking, drug use and other destructive behaviour. Obsessive social media use, for whom the only score is the number of “likes” for a particular selfie, can be a symptom of the blind alley they find themselves in.
It is the youth who are suffering the effects of the crisis in Higher Education that spawned last year’s #FeesMustFall campaign. It is the youth who are leaving school and finding it almost impossible to find jobs – just as they were the direct victims of Cosatu’s vehement rejection of the Presidency’s proposal for paid youth internships.
It is also they who are targeted by advertisers for the newest smartphone, latest “torn” jeans and coolest tekkie brand. No wonder they are angry and some are lashing out.
Part of the blame lies with parents who out of choice or necessity have relinquished their role.
Those who can afford it offload parental duties and indulge the child’s every material whim (including iPhones for fiveyear-olds), but offer very little of what these youngsters need most: their own time.
At the other extreme, poor parents fall asleep on parental watch thanks to the stresses of joblessness, or long hours that don’t give them time to be a parent. Some communities have a glaring absence of fathers and father figures, as if their children were born of immaculate conception.
As communities, we cannot continually blame everything else and give ourselves a free pass when it comes to the troubles of our children.
It is the responsibility of every parent (man and woman) to reserve some time for child-rearing, from infancy all the way through to the difficult teenage years and young adulthood.
Take back your power to be a parent – to your own child, and those of others.