Unleash the potential of youth in order to build a winning nation
Reflecting on a critical moment of consciousness in his childhood, renowned Marxist intellectual and former President of the Third World Forum, Samir Amin tells the following story, “I was in the car with my mother, I was six. And when I came out of the car with my mother, I saw a boy at my age who was looking into the garbage and poorly dressed, almost naked feet and so on. I said mama what is he looking for? Something to eat? Why he has nothing to eat? They are poor, they have nothing to eat. And I said why is it so? She said because the world is badly made. And I answered, we should change the world.”
The story Amin narrates from his childhood came to mind as I was reflecting on South Africa’s national development aspirations and the often talked about youth bulge, which it is claimed could be harnessed in order to unleash a potential demographic dividend, as young people make up roughly a third of the overall population in contemporary SA.
In his response to the situation as a child, Samir Amin depicts the capacity of young people to envision a different world, to pursue change and transformation in order to bring about a better world, to challenge the status quo and take a stand against all forms of injustice and inequality, to seek to find creative and innovative solutions to the manifold problems of an increasingly complex society and world.
Successful societies are those that tap into these innate traits of young people and use them to catapult themselves towards better living standards and an improved quality of life, this creative impulse that youth possess, the energy and zest for agitation to change and improve things. South Africa needs to tap into the potential of its youth, not tomorrow, but today, if we are ever going to fulfil our own potential as a nation and achieve all of our developmental objectives.
We have to unleash the potential of young people to achieve our developmental and transformational goals, young people are change agents of society, creative, full of energy and new ideas. The Bolshevik revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin understood this phenomenon very well, hence he is quoted as once saying, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”
This generation of young people that make up such a significant part of our overall population, can change the trajectory of this entire nation and usher it into a prosperous future if they are unleashed and not just seen as a burden, as is currently the case. Young people must take up their rightful place in our society as leaders, influencers, change-agents in order to usher us into our ideal state, the national democratic society.
Samir Amin’s story, as narrated above, is also poignantly significant to us, in that it sadly depicts the condition of most young people in contemporary South Africa. The young child who is poorly dressed and looking for food in the dust bin, represents the majority of the youth of South Africa today: marginalised, on the periphery, jobless, hopeless, disillusioned, frustrated, seen as the “wretched of the earth” to use a phrase popularised by Frantz Fanon.
How do we change this? To ask a question that was asked by Joel Netshitenzhe in a speech he gave at the 200 Young South Africans You Must Take to Lunch gathering on the 08th of June 2010, “What should be done to ensure that young South Africans in general break free of the psychology of marginalisation?”
In the same speech referred to above, Netshitenzhe continues by giving examples of the power of young people in impacting the world and transforming society:
- John Langalibalele Dube, who became the first president of the ANC at the age of 41, had already attained laudable achievements such as setting up the legendary Ohlange High School at 30
- Phillip Tabane of Malombo fame, started making an impression in South African jazz as a teenager
- Steve “Kalamazoo” Mokone who, at 17 made football history as the first black player to play in a professional European league
- The revolutionary exploits of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in their twenties they liberated Cuba
- Karl Marx who by the age of 30, together with Friedrich Engels, had written many books on human development and social organisation, including the Communist Manifesto
- By the time Charlotte Maxeke led the anti-pass campaign in 1913 at 39 years of age, she had emerged as South Africa’s first woman BSc graduate, as an organiser of the Women’s Mite Missionary Society and established a training college in Evaton.
We have to unleash this innate genius in our youth in order to fulfil our potential as a nation, young people must occupy positions of leadership and influence and begin to change the narrative, shape the discourse, become job generators as opposed to job seekers, take the reins and drive the nation forward, with the ceiling of the previous generation now becoming their floor, their launch pad to catapult the country towards greater and better for all.
The point here is not to be ageist and dispense with the critical wisdom that age and experience bring, because being pro-youth does not necessarily equate to being anti-old.
What we need is a healthy infusion of youth mixed with the experience of age in order to build a winning nation. The problem at the moment is that the young are on the periphery whilst the old are hanging onto the levers of power, even at the expense of the future of the country.
What we need is a generation of elderly people who understand the power of unleashing the potential of youth in the manner of Samir Amin, as narrated by a close friend of Amin’s, after Amin’s death in 2018, “He was quite an extraordinary person in that he was always willing to encourage young people — he would agree to read their PhD theses or draft drafts of their books and even agree to write forewords, prefaces or introductions to such books. He was truly generous with his time. He always had time for young people and felt it was important to help a new generation of thinkers and militants.”
Mugabe Ratshikuni works for the Gauteng provincial government; He is an activist with a passion for social justice and transformation. He writes here in his personal capacity.
