‘The youth of today lack common vision’
FROM university and college campuses to parliament, the youth are shaking up the country’s sociopolitical sphere. As one young political activist puts it, “we’re invoking the spirit of 1976”.
Lindsay Maasdorp is national spokesman of Land First, Black First, a new organisation subscribing to black consciousness, a doctrine championed by the iconic Steve Biko.
Maasdorp, who was part of the youth who took the #FeesMustFall protests to parliament last October, told Sowetan that politically active youth are learning a lot on how youth organised marches on June 16 1976.
“[June 16] wasn’t just a sporadic ‘I don’t want to learn in Afrikaans’ [protest]. Sometimes people like to reduce it to just that programme of action, but youth organised a lot.”
And they were taught black consciousness as a theory a lot, he said. “Black consciousness got entrenched when [Onkgopotse] Tiro – a teacher – taught people like [Tsietsi] Mashinini.
“When that got entrenched, the youth had a political and ideological position. They revolted against an anti-black, racist system through mass action. The role of the youth in 1976 was to be conscious and make others conscious, and to implement that revolting against Bantu education.”
Maasdorp said he sees youth becoming more politically involved in the next 10 years. “We take on the spirit of Bantu Biko, we learn from Tiro, we learn from Mashinini. We’re invoking the spirit of 1976.”
Land First, Black First is one of the organisations that have organised a three-day commemoration of June 16 at Kilombo village in Khayelitsha, Western Cape.
Njabulo Nzuza, secretary-general of the ANC Youth League, said young people were the fuel behind the 1976 revolt.
“In any revolution, the youth fuels that revolution. That’s exactly what the youth of 1976 did. We must indeed celebrate this day because we had the youth taking a stand.”
But Nzuza voices disappointment about the role of youth in politics today. “As the youth today we lack a common vision,” he said.
“We’re starting to be a youth that’s thinking individualistically in terms of our success. We need to find our vision and fulfil it, as Frantz Fanon says, every generation must discover its mission and achieve it.”
Nzuza said he wished more young people would swell the ranks of the ANC over the next years. “It would be useful to see more young people joining the ANC. We can’t deal with [social and economic] problems while divided.
“It’s really critical that as young people we unite behind the vision ‘economic freedom in our lifetime’.”
Piwe Mpahlwa, president of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (Pasma), said the organisation was doing its bit to make students aware of unresolved issues in the country.
“Pasma [speaks] to the fact that people should know that they are landless. They should know that the economy is in the land and the land is not in the hands of its rightful owners.” Pasma has been visible in campus protests, be it #FeesMustFall, campaigns against outsourcing at universities or the uprising against financial exclusions at the Tshwane University of Technology earlier in the year.
Mpahlwa said members of Pasma who have now graduated will work towards reviving the now defunct Pan Africanist Youth Congress, their sister youth structure.
Mpho Morolane, president of the Economic Freedom Fighters Student Command (EFFSC), lashed out at what he said was hypocrisy of celebrating the youth of 1976 but “suppressing” young people who are fighting existing “injustices”.
Though a number of student activists were now facing expulsion at universities for rising up against exclusions and outsourcing, among other things, EFFSC members were not deterred, he said.