50 Years Later, the Spirit of Exclusion Lives On

GOOD Statement by Kaden Arguile, GOOD National Youth Organiser:

On this anniversary of Youth Day half a century later, we must pause and reflect on the core message behind the tragedy of the Soweto Uprising. The battle against exclusion. Being forced to educate with a language uncommon to your entire culture and without proficiency was intentionally exclusive for the apartheid government to maintain control of the educated work force. 50 years later and the youth of our country face a battle of exclusion in both education and employment once again.

Our latest census of 2022 placed the population percentage of youth (ages 0-17) at 33 percent. With that number definitely increasing over the past four years we can ascertain that the burden of responsibility on our education facilities and youth work opportunities will be exponentially increased in the next decade. In addition, South Africa has recently been announced as having the world’s worst literacy rate for Grade 4 pupils. Finally, we must acknowledge that with rapid de-industrialisation and a failure from government initiatives like the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) to make significant change to youth unemployment we cannot purely rely on government for a fix.

For an individual to beat unemployment effectively they need three forms of capital. Time capital, connection capital and financial capital are all methods in which a youth can escape unemployment. While having capital of time in abundance, impoverished youth do not have access to the latter. This means they must find employment in the private or public sector with failure resulting in entrapment within a potential endless cycle of poverty. Every year 100 000’s matriculate, thousands graduate and thousands join the back of the first-time jobseeker’s queue. This is the definition of a bottleneck.

GOOD acknowledges that the situation is dire but there are a wide range of steps to be taken to solve this crisis. We encourage Government to enforce any of these directives with the intention of unclogging this bottleneck.

1. Invest into more TVET’s and Higher Education facilities throughout the country that are supported by affordable housing and residences. This will directly result in a highly educated populace which places less of a financial burden on students and will allow for more entrepreneurship strengthening our employment figures.
2. The introduction of a Basic Income Grant would immediately increase the likelihood of entrepreneurship amongst youth due to financial capital access. Empowering people directly.
3. Invest into youth in relation to new technology. Sectors like digital security, clean energy and AI are all sectors that have exploded in the last two decades. Acknowledging this fact means investing into youth initiatives within the sector and pairing this with investment into education for these sectors to promote them.
4. Use youth as the backbone of industrialisation. While we are moving away from fossil fuel industrialisation as a country there are still many sectors that need massive infrastructure projects. South Africa is still lacking roads, hospitals, clean water, housing and cities. All sectors that the president has committed to improving. Instead of pouring billions into programmes like the NYDA use that capital to invest in projects nationwide where youth would not only garner employment but also vital skills for their next venture upon project completion.
5. Adapt temporary work into transitional work. Many of our employment opportunities (such as EPWP) are temporary. Regardless of your excellent performance during your contract work you are simply regurgitated back into the unemployed masses. We must adapt these systems to allow for permanent opportunities.

Adopting all of these approaches would be a decisive multi-pronged attack in our war against youth unemployment. The next half-century is a make or break for our youth. We must acknowledge that this crisis could spell doom for us all. Our economy is cyclic. Pensioners and young children rely on the working class for their funding in pensions or grants. With a shrinking amount of youth opportunities, we open ourselves to a future where half of youth are unemployed. Drastic intervention is our only hope against exclusion. Fifty years have passed but young South Africans still dream of a country which views them as important.

GOOD Inclusivity: GOOD aims to be a party for all South Africans, regardless of race or gender.

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