SA Blook, Chapter 11: "The role of the younger generation in SA, and what we need to do to support them"

This is my contribution to the South African Blook Project. Many thanks to Darren Gorton for give me the opportunity to be involved in all this.

We definitely didn’t create apartheid and we certainly didn’t contribute to ending it, but the reality is that we are the ones feeling the weight of it the most. We feel the burdens of the past coupled with the difficulties of the present. Affirmative Action, Crime and a sagging economy leave us in a struggle for the finite resources our country can provide.
The youth have inherited a South Africa filled with a rich and disturbing history. What we have before us is a country at a crossroads yet we find ourselves acting in apathy.

The youth of South Africa, much like the youth around the world, are disillusioned. The levels of apathy, lack of ambition, and just plain indifference seem incredibly endemic. When asked who their heroes are, the youth of today will mention the name of a pop star rather than those who have legitimately earned respect.

While the “adults” in our country deal with the legacy of the past and try to shape the future, the youth suffer while we wait for the imposed direction. Education seems to be a laughable concept – everyone wants to be educated but no one wants to work for it. The flagging matric pass rate is all one needs to realise this fact.

In my mind a major problem is the lack of interest from these so-called adults. There is no one to mentor the youth or provide direction. The adults in the media are all charlatans promoting misconduct and corruption. Ultimately when you’re shown that perverse behaviour is not only acceptable, but will be condoned in the highest court in our country, then how should an impressionable mind be expected to react?

When your politicians, community leaders and teachers do not have the interest to push you towards excellence, apathy and mediocrity are rife. While the leaders of today attempt to create a better tomorrow, they need to realise that the youth of today is the better tomorrow. The only way to shape the future is to mould the youth of today into self-sustaining adults who can and will carry the country forward.

While our government and potential incumbents might need a few lessons in common sense, those past their prime cannot solve the issue and a solution needs to be found. The point, however of this commentary is to posit some solutions to a far-reaching problem and to do this we need to look further afield.

A massive amount of our yearly budget is pumped into education but unemployment remains at deplorable levels. In my mind what needs to change is that we must stop giving our youth a meal to survive but rather give them a fishing rod and instructions on how to create their own meal. This will provide them with a longer-term solution rather than a short-term approach to silence an unhappy mass.

The question is: if we are aiming at teaching our youth skills – then what, and how do we teach them? The solution to the issue of self-sufficiency is to for the youth of our country to create their own employment and in turn employment for many others.

It is important to note that not everyone is likely to become the next Bill Gates but if one person starts a business and can employ just one person then there are already two less people looking for work and two more people positively contributing to our economy.

This future unfortunately cannot be created as easily as willing it onto a page. The problem with being self-sufficient is that one needs access to finance and mentorship to help steer the business owner in the right direction.
In our wonderful world of Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives need to move away from providing the proverbial fish and towards teaching them to provide for themselves. Micro financing systems have been incredibly successful in other developing nations, most worse-off than South Africa. It’s one thing to give the youth money to create their own wealth but without the knowledge they will squander that money in moments.

We live in a country where concepts such as Affirmative Action and quotas are a part of our corporate landscape and something companies are incredibly proud of, but this is certainly not helping the youth. Ultimately these concepts make those affected either disillusioned by their lack of job prospects, or feeling like tokens in a company. Every company should be mandated to have a mentorship division, helping in the daily running of youth business and providing advice. Excellent leaders and managers are not born with these abilities and need to be moulded into the powerhouses they could potentially become.

If the Investec’s, Mvelaphanda’s and BHP Billiton’s of our country could create this support structure, then the youth of our country could in turn support not only themselves but also those to come.

As South Africans it is our duty to band together and support the future, as only we can promote a change in attitudes. South Africa has always relied on its natural resources to compete on a global scale but these will inevitably dry up. Unless we give intellectual capital the respect it deserves, we are simply relying on the dying embers of the resources we once commanded. Only when this occurs will we have the place in the future we all desire and deserve.

This post is a chapter of the SA Blook: A Piece of Significance, an online book written by a diverse group of writers with strong views of our country and the reality we find ourselves living in. The other chapters in the Blook are here:

Introduction
1. The new South Africa – is it real?
2. Is SA rich or poor?
3. What the world thinks of South Africa and what our global opportunities are
4. The importance of each individual’s contribution collectively
5. SA Inc and the business of doing business in SA
6. The beauty and grandeur that surrounds us
7. The importance of technology in SA’s global emergence
8. Building brand South Africa
9. Innovate for a better South Africa
10. Innovate for a better South Africa
11. The role of the younger generation in SA, and what we need to do to support them
12. Connecting South Africa – Communities that transcend technology
13. We are African – the role of collaboration in South Africa’s growth