Youth Day- Looking Forward

Input for Ambassador Talk:

The youth of 76 have given the many young people the space necessary to be able to freely engage the spaces they have been afforded. We certainly are eternally grateful for these efforts and honour the likes of Mashinini and Hector Perterson and many others who sacrificed everything for us to have the opportunity to make the country better. In achieving the objectives of the better South Africa for which the youth aspire, and others have given their lives,  it is important for the youth to note the following:

·         Means of production: As the Youth League back home continues to engage the issue of the ownership of the means of production, it is important for the youth nationaly to broadly engage in this debate. This youth must come from across sectors, race, class and gender. Most especially the youth that has benefited most from the sacrifice of 76, the skilled young professionals, intellectuals and academics who are in a primary position to utilize the tools of analysis they have been provided by their education to seriously think of how best we can utilize the resources at our disposal to benefit all of our people and not just a minority (black or white). This must look into the ownership, management, efficiency and sustainability of the productive forces such as mines and farms. The method you use to this ends, must take into account the constitution, the respect for the rule of law, and must also learn from our neighbors. But more realistically, we must broadly think past the narrow nationalization debate, we must look holistically at private-public partnerships, the manufacturing sector and other value add industries, decentralized self-sustaining income generating entities,  and the transformation of the economy into a more service oriented and knowledge based economy as pronounced by the national planning commission in its recent reports on development indicators in South Africa.

·         The role of Education: Former colonial Universities, such as the University of Cape Town and University of Witwatersrand owe a significant amount to the South African public. Not only because they use the hard earned taxes, but because they are the center of knowledge generation; a melting pot of the countries minds and diversity and a place where the dreams aspirations and ambitions of the young people of South Africa are formed. These Universities have certainly made some significant strides to create the global citizen, but the heart of that global citizen is European. They have in struggled to create the local citizen, whose aspirations, outlook and commitment is to the use of his education and knowledge to build South Africa and Africa. They have created highly skilled professionals, who have instead had their sights on Europe and the developed world and thus many of South Africas most skilled professionals have been lost to the developed countries. Part of what the youth must do is to make the African Universities truly African, and to engage in a constant dialogue about the curriculum that creates a sense of patriotism and a thought-led, action-oriented and interdisciplinary drive toward the provision of solutions to some of the youths contemporary challenges, particularly secondary education, unemployment and moral degradation.

·         Political and public spaces: In all of history it is true that spaces have always been contested. Even in the ANC itself most recently at polokwane, there has been a shift in the order and kind of the leadership because the space was contested. The youth of 76 are a perfect example of the historical fact that in order to influence, in order to be heard, you will have to wrestle for the spaces. They simply will not be handed to you by those who occupy them. The youth of South Africa and Africa today, must fight, not necessarily in a violent manner-which is arguably harder, to gain the political spaces necessary to advance the views, dreams and aspirations that they have for South Africa and Africa. Many young people today feel that there is a certain kind of person that can lead the political platforms; they feel disempowered because they speak in a particular way or are from a particular background that may not necessarily be compatible with the personalities of the ruling youth leaders. It is worth noting that when history makes the judgment, it will not be necessarily be a judgment on particular individuals and youth formations, it will be a blanket judgment on the entire generation in much the same way as the heros of 76 have been the mouth piece of that entire generation, even though they may not have necessarily been in the majority. Therefore, it is important to contest the space to make our views heard, least we allow others to paint an untrue story about the kind of generation we were. As Marx observes: “ the views of a society are determined by the ruling classes of that society.”

Finally, we certainly have a lot of work to do realize the aspirations o the youth of 76. In order to challenge the explosive and volatile challenges that face 3.1 Million of our brothers and sisters today, we will have to relook our economic terms, the role of our education and most importantly we will have to position ourselves in the organs of the state and political formations, better to serve the interests of the youth that will and must, drive South Africa to a new era of socio-economic relations. We certainly hope that we can have platforms like this back home to freely engage our leadership on what we believe is best to take South Africa forward.

Thank you your Excellency.