NYDA must not repeat the mistakes of the past
The youth of South Africa has a newfound interest in politics. This was demonstrated in our recent elections when the youth of our country registered and voted in record numbers. Just like their counterparts in 1976, who we commemorate on Youth Day, they understand their responsibility to participate in society to shape the future of our nation. The key difference, 33 years on, is that most young people in South Africa today enjoy greater freedoms and rights than most of the 1976 generation.
Freedom and rights bring added responsibilities. Young people in South Africa today, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, must take responsibility for using the opportunities available to them to create a better future, not only for themselves, but for South Africa as a whole.
Conversely, when opportunities are wasted, the impact is far wider than merely the individual concerned. Drugs devastate entire communities. Teenage pregnancy destroys opportunities for many young girls. HIV and AIDS destroy families.
The state has the responsibility for ensuring that young people have access to education and skills-training - the foundation of opportunity. This is an important pathway out of poverty. Education and skills are essential for employment in a knowledge economy. A recent report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise and Business Leadership South Africa showed that in 2007, 2,7 million people aged between 15 and 30 years old were unemployed and that 72% of this group of young people had never worked before. At the same time there is a serious shortage of skilled workers in the South African economy.
This anomaly shows that, since the advent of democracy, government's key failure has been in education and skills-training of young people. Without this foundation, young people cannot make use of their opportunities. One of South Africa's majority priorities in the years ahead must be to manage an education and training system that ensures more and more young people are acquiring the skills that they need to contribute to their own, and our country's development, by participating in the global economy.
Over the past decade, the various provincial Youth Commissions have failed entirely to extend greater opportunities to young people. Together with the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, they ended up as little more than patronage schemes for ANC loyalists. The new National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) that is being launched today, seems set to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The DA believes it was a fundamental mistake to elevate the deputy president of the ANC Youth League, Andile Lungisa, to chair the NYDA. This immediately positions the organisation as a partisan political structure, rather than an organisation committed to the development of all young people. In addition, the ANC Youth League President has reportedly insisted on the exclusion of DA-aligned youth from the Agency. If this is the approach, the NYDA will merely be another patronage agency to advance the selective interest of ANC cadres, and will be doomed to failure.
It is a matter of further concern that the staff of the failed Youth Commissions and Umsobomvu fund will now be employed by the NYDA. If they failed before, why should they succeed now? The DA would like to give the NYDA a chance, and we will be watching them very closely to determine whether they use their R1bn budget of taxpayers' money to promote opportunities for youth generally, or merely to become yet another feeding trough for the ANC. The signs, at this stage, are not auspicious. South Africa's youth deserve better.
Statement issued by Democratic Alliance leader, Helen Zille, June 16 2009
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