Youth Day – No cause for celebration

By Karabo-Maya Rodwell | June 2023

As Youth Day approaches, we are reminded that two out of every three young people in South Africa is unemployed. Thus, the question that needs to be asked is are we celebrating Youth Day or are we using the day to remind ourselves that South African youth are in crisis? 16 June marks a time when young people in South Africa stood up and marched against the racist system of apartheid that deliberately created inequality based on racial classification. Nearly 50 years after the 16 June Uprising, and a change of government, the same largely working-class Black youth are marginalised. 

In reflecting on youth and political movements, I am struck by the idealism and hope of young people. We believe that change is possible. We can adapt. We have always been at the forefront of struggle in South Africa.

Yet youth in our country are often viewed as surplus citizens and a threat to the wellbeing of the nation. In fact, there is no future wellbeing for any nation if young people are not central to its development and are playing a central role in the country’s future. “The primary reason behind the unrest is simple lack of patience by the young folk with a government which is refusing to change” – this statement by Biko nearly five decades ago rings true for now with the current government seemly unwilling to listen to the youth, still impatient of a government refusing to change as 30 years after liberation there is a crisis that affects our youth. 

Government, policy makers and leaders in civil society need to give serious attention to the economic circumstance of our youth, including skills upgrading. Further, we need to trace back to the fundamental principles that guided the liberation of this country. Enshrined in both Black Consciousness and Pan Africanist movements was the right to a comprehensive education, the right to land and the right to food, to address the crisis of the young generations in our country. These were by no means unrealistic demands, and are so obviously rights at the core of any healthy society. Historically, political leaders have emphasised the importance of youth in political engagement. Activists such as Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Stephen Bantu Biko, and writer Ellen Kuzwayo, envisioned a South Africa that is cognisant of its history and intentional about the education of youth.

Young people must be seen as the harbingers of change, and progress. On this Youth Day, let us accept it is not enough to simply pay homage to the youth of 16 June 1976 for their bravery, but to honour them in the most constructive way that we can – by focusing on the health and wellbeing of youth in South Africa today, our future leaders. 

To quote Sobukwe, “Here is a tree rooted in African soil, nourished with waters from the rivers of Afrika. Come and sit under its shade and become, with us, the leaves of the same branch and the branches of the same tree. Sons and daughters of Afrika”. 

Karabo-Maya Sankara Rodwell recently completed her MA Candidate in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand. One of her main areas of interest is Pan Africanism, having completed her Honours research with distinction on Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and his impact on youth pre- and post-1994. Her Masters research focused on the experiences of Black women in South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement. The data for both research projects was collected through extensive interviews to understand how Black people in South Africa have traversed inherently racist and colonial spaces. With a focus on the historical amnesia the country encounters regarding South African liberation movements, Karabo-Maya aims to acknowledge the complex history of the country, and to draw intergenerational parallels about racial dynamics pre- and post- 1994.