On 16th June this year The Apartheid Museum invited different youth organizations to come and share their current experiences and to discuss the challenges facing them. Other invited organizations were GFSA, SAPS Diepkloof and Booysens Youth Desk as well as the Young Communist Party and the CPF.
A variety of different speakers were invited to discuss the youth of today. Musa Nxumalo from
SAPS Diepkloof Youth Desk stressed that the young people were not utilizing their opportunities. He urged the youth to build their self esteem and confidence if they want to be something for this country. He brought up the problem of drug lords and urged the youth to turn away from drugs. He encouraged the youth to use their youth agencies (i.e. National Youth Development Agency and other structures representing youth) so that they obtain access to information like bursaries, learnerships, jobs and other opportunities.
Siyabulela Lingani from the Young Communist Party spoke about the formation of the ANC up to 1994 trying to give a picture where we come from to current day as South Africans. He spoke about unity and forgiveness displayed by our icon Nelson Mandela for unity in this country.
Ms. Rameli spoke about her journey to success was not easy doing this to convince the youth that hard work never kills and by setting goals and having self trust youth can achieve tremendous things in their lives. She stated that youth today lack planning and if they can develop plans and set goals then they can achieve more.
Thanduxlo Xaki from GFSA told the gathering about Gun Free Zones and Firearm Free Zones. He explained the difference between the two and how important it was to create safe spaces through gun free zones. He also spoke about the danger of owning guns and bringing them into the home.
He appealed to parents not to buy their children toy guns as children cannot tell the difference between real and fake guns and cannot be gun proofed. While toy guns don’t in themselves cause violence in children, they do promote in children the sense that it is ok to use guns to solve conflict and to make people do what you want them to do.
Comrade Zuma from Diepkloof spoke about unity in our youth and wanted the youth to follow the example set by Nelson Mandela. He drew a comparison of the youth of today and those of 1976, and he said the 1976 class worked as a collective towards bringing development in their precious community but youth for today think about destroying instead of building.
Other youth raised concerns about the youth agencies not going to communities to market their ideas and there was a lack of access to information. They urged government to create more opportunities for youth so that crime can be reduced as most the crime committed in our country, was committed by the youth.
In conclusion, the criticism against our youth was failure to obey the mechanism of conflict resolutions (i.e arbitration, mediation and negotiation). It was felt that our youth should receive life skills course and other training which can enable them to deal or cope with stress.
Government and youth agencies should visit communities and spread opportunities to the young people. Parents should also take part in the development of the future of their children. Youth should be courageous, flexible, analytical and take every opportunity come thier way. Youth should have access to information so that they can be empowered through skills development and participate towards bringing economic development in our county.