When you go through the country- you see it and you have become so accustomed to it to such an extent that you just bypass it. There is anger on the faces of our people who are by and large black, oppressed and marginalised. When you go into the townships, squatter camps, farm workers’ houses and streets where some of them live no one should be able to deny that the conditions that black people live in are not fit for humans. However, to come to the latter conclusion you will have to first acknowledge that colonialism is alive through coloniality and that apartheid did not die it was privatised as Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh asserts.
We were
told that education is the key to success and believed it. We have come to
realise that it was not entirely the truth. Increasingly many young people are
going to TVET colleges, and universities and doing short courses with different
institutions only to ultimately add to the unemployment rate. Now even those
who did not make it to higher education ask us: what is the use of getting
higher education certificates when all of us are unemployed? Those who
continued with postgraduate studies as a form of avoiding unemployment have
indirectly lessened their chances of being employable as mere entry-level jobs
are hard to come by and those that need postgraduate studies go with experience.
Then
there are those among the youth that reached matric or dropped out who are even
more despondent in their state of unemployment. Those that dropped out mostly did
not drop out because they wanted to but rather it is because the education fed
to us in schools only caters for the talents of those who are academics. The
education system does not cater for the different talents that different people
have in society. Schools should not be institutions whose outcome is to give
you the NSC certificate but rather they should nature all the talents of
individuals as a means to ensure that young people make a living out of their
talents. Someone recently said to me that we must open soccer schools where we
just focus on naturing this talent because at the end of the day good soccer
players earn more money than medical doctors.
The
solution coming from the highest office in the country for this unemployment
problem is R350 grants and employment schemes that last for 6 months. Although
the effort is appreciated there are no long-term solutions to these
initiatives. The state can ease the burden by limiting the scope of tenders and
empowering public works to implement public employment schemes; aggressively
implement the three-stream model in education; support SMMEs to become
producers instead of intermediaries; capacitate the state by having skills
audit to root out unqualified and incapacitated state employees to replace them
with unemployed graduates. However, there is no political will to take such
bold moves so the youth find solace in abusing drugs and alcohol.
The
people have made a bold statement through the low voter turnout which is that
they refuse to be pawns (voting cattle) in the games of kings, queens and
bishops (monopoly capital and political elites). While the lives of the kings,
queens and bishops improve, the lives of the pawns continue to drown in
increasing poverty, unemployment, and inequality. The youth leaders that used
to be seen as a beacon of hope are increasingly becoming a political elite themselves.
Being a friend of a leader now means that you are also a leader regardless of
whether you have the capacity. Genuine youth leaders are increasingly being
co-opted into the political elite or being marginalised.
The
July riots of 2021 in Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng showed what can happen when
anger boils over. Besides the instigation from pro-Zuma supporters, the
environment was fertile for looting as many people went to loot items that they
needed and did not have. In the North West province, there was an initiative to
protect properties like malls which by and large are owned by the real owners
of the economy. The real owners who climbed with their dogs in the front of the
bakkie while the working class are being slapped by the wind, sun and sometimes
rain are the back of the bakkie. However, it seems like this treatment of the
working class is does not stem from racism as there are horrific stories of how
Indians treat our people working in their homes. There are also lived
experiences of how African tenderpreneurs disappear on the African
workers when the money is paid to them for the work they didn’t do themselves.
Capital has a tendency of exorcising the ubuntu out of people.
Just
because I am okay and comfortable financially does not mean that everything is
okay. It is not okay that black people, especially women, remain the face of poverty.
It is not okay that some people are so rich while most of our people languish
in poverty. Meanwhile, there is no political apatite to implement a wealth tax.
The situation in this country is already at a crisis point something needs to
be done to save the future of the country. We should not solely look to the government
for solutions because it will not only affect the government but all of us. We
all can do something for someone.
