Youth month should stress future possibilities

As the curtain closes on another youth month, I ask myself what remarkable change transpired in the lives of our youth during June?

Celebrations this year took place against the backdrop of several incidents of rape and murder of young children. To make matters worse the majority of perpetrators, if not all, are youngsters. If that is not enough to raise alarm bells, the fact that social challenges have played a role in almost all of these cases is significant.

We have long passed the stage of straightbacked alarm at the news of a rape or murder of a child. By now we should be sitting on the edge of our seats and asking ourselves rather earnestly, “where and when did we take a wrong turn?” Whom or what do we blame? Drug addiction, the drug lord who owns the means of our degradation, the merchants who pass the quick fix from one hand to the next? Or, are we going to blame peer-pressure?

A very good friend reminded me recently that it is tougher being a youngster today than a few years ago.

The youth of today are exposed to peer-pressure on a higher scale, communities with higher expectations from our youth – mainly because there are more opportunities – and then there is the pressure of social media.

As we put filters on our photographs, we cannot seem to do the same with our lives.

I draw the conclusion that changes in life expectations are largely to blame. Our youth are trying to keep everyone happy and to fit in. Very little focus, however, is given to our youngsters as individuals. The individual rather focuses on expectations from family, the community, friends, social media, and so on, but not their own goals, their vision.

The solution looks simple by addressing the challenges and paying attention to individual goals, but is that what we are doing? And what contribution is society, generally, making?

Something that has bothered me for some time now is the fact that we don’t give justice to the thousands of young people who, 41 years ago, stood up for what they believed to be wrong and to make shifts that finally led to a democratic South Africa.

Youth Day, and more still the month, is intended to commemorate the youth legends of yesteryear. But also to look at the challenges our youth battle with today.

Instead of doing this, Youth Day has just turned into another public holiday, an opportunity to drink, to be lazy or to just enjoy sports events.

On Youth Day I posted on Facebook: “I fail to understand why every Youth Day there is this and that sport thing. Sport is not the only thing our youth are good at and not all youths are interested in sport. Let’s not only focus on entertaining our youth but also inform and educate them to be better leaders.”

The more positive comments hold that sport unites, is healthy and promotes team spirit.

I still wonder, though: how many young people actually attend the sports events, and I don’t just mean those participating or are forced to be there.

Besides a certificate of participation and possible trophy, what else did our young people accomplish by the end of youth month?

If we want to address the challenges of our youth, we will have to be more creative than a sports event or two. If all the song, dance and sports are planned better Youth Day can be used to provide an opportunity for our young people to get information to further their studies, employment opportunities and learn more about different industries of employment.

Open days are not only for schools.

It is not only matriculants who need bursaries and do we have a database of unemployed young people in our communities?

Daylin Mitchell, member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, recently said in parliament the youth in our rural communities should be empowered.

What have youth development and opportunities been to young people in rural areas over the past five to seven years? How many cases are there not of an older individual, with more work experience, being employed instead of a young person with a degree, because the young person lacks the work experience? No opportunity is given, though, to the young person to gain the necessary experience.

I agree with my friend the MPL, that if young, previously disadvantaged South Africans aren’t empowered they will remain in a social void.

Youth development, then, is about presenting opportunities for the future, or we fail the Class of ’76.

• Original post appeared as Post Scriptum in Paarl Post of Thursday 6 July 2017