By TUMI MMUSINYANE
This year marks the 45th anniversary of the 16 June 1976 students marched for a better inclusive quality education without Afrikaans. However, the statistics show that the burden of unemployment is also concentrated amongst the youth as they account for 59, 5% (63%) of the total number of unemployed persons.
The unemployment rate among the youth is high irrespective of education level. The graduate unemployment rate was 40, 3% for those aged 15–24 and 15, 5% among those aged 25–34 years, while the rate among adults (aged 35–64 years) was 5, 4%.
You being employed by the Department of Labour, you should consider yourself to be privileged that you are not forming part of those unemployment statistics and you should not take it for granted that you are employed.
From my experience as some of you are inspectors, I have represented clients at the CCMA, Bargaining Councils and I have witnessed how a lot of our people are being oppressed at their workplaces and have referred many to Labour Department. However, your brothers and sisters instead of helping the oppressed took bribes from employers and made a lot of people suffer.
I just want to beg you not to follow the same and do the job that you are being paid for. Just have a conscience and ask how many people/families are going to suffer, sleep hungry by not doing your job, and accepting bribes from employers.
All of this is for the love of money, which is the root of all evil. At your age, (young) you still have an opportunity to be human and do the job that you are being paid already, contribute to a humane society.
Lately, nothing shocks anyone except our President and his Ministers when they talk to the media about youth. I am afraid to be the bearer of bad news that, ‘It’s because we have allowed them to be the charters of our destiny.”
Steve Biko said: “Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of those whom they oppress.”
Post-apartheid, are you being oppressed by your own leaders, into believing that they are doing their best to give you opportunities? Are you content that they are doing their best to give you those opportunities?
Then why are you still suffering? Your minds are soft like a sponge and you are used to be played at by those in position of authority. It may be those who have money, or in a position of power.
Because you want to belong, you are prepared to take away your wisdom, suppress your conscience, knowledge, and all the hard work just to please those in the position of authority. It may be those who have money, position of power, such as managers, your parents, church/cultural leaders, sangomas, traditional healers, politicians and rich people.
We have seen how even educated people are being used by powerful people to do all the wrong things and they know, but they sold their souls to the devil because of the desire to belong, being noticed, as soon as you get up and close to people in power.
Do not say I did not warn you, “You are next.” Selling our souls to people that have no interests of this country or yours in their cold hearts. We have failed Biko very badly, and continue to listen to every lie year in year out.
You have all been captured and you are not aware, and you will fight anyone who tries to enlighten you. I prefer telling the truth, even when it means that I will be ostracized for it. I made peace with it and live in harmony that I have not deceived anyone, served my role without fear, favour, and or prejudice, and sleeps peacefully.
Because I have realized how being used can be haunting, so whatever I will be saying today, it’s nothing but the truth. All you have to do is to open your mind to internalise it and decide to do something about your life or nothing because you are used to being exploited and they know you cannot do anything.
My message to you today is, I need you to charter your own way, using your own rules, do what you want because no one owns you or you should not be under anyone’s leash and that scares a whole lot of people when they do not know where you stand.
They devise rules, traps to catch, while afraid of you. It is exactly what they have done to you, you are being owned, being told what you can reach and not reach, do and not do, say and not say. Meaning, you can never stand for what is right because they own your mind a long time ago.
Your education system teaches you to be nothing but an ordinary employee, how to draft your CVs and lacks content that empowers you to be your own boss, establish, manufacture and own means of production. It’s not going to change because you go to universities where they offer irrelevant/outdated and expensive qualifications, only well on paper.
When the rest of the world moves to technology, robotics and etc, ours is still trapped in the old way. Is this the life that you are living and wish to be even today, 26 years later?
I am not a politician, I do not speak like them and I wish not to be one. I am just a citizen who lives amongst politicians, religious people, atheists, culturalism, economist, scientists, liars, beggars, corrupters, and who look upon us to elevate them to the highest tables for a proper view of their food and who they loot with.
Often politicians like to say, leave politics to us politicians, yet they forget who put them up there? We the voters, but know politics will never leave you alone. They will follow you to the dungeon and even if you do not vote, you are nevertheless affected because Stalin once said: “People who cast votes decide nothing, but people who count the votes decide everything.”
I depict SA by referring it to Kwei Armah in his book: “Beautiful ones are not yet born”, where he deals with a state of shock, disappointment in how in Africa post-independence has left them to suffer in the hands of the big corrupt people that are protected by a net, while the same net allows for small ones to fall down and be caught by big ones without any remorse/conscience or consequences.
You follow a religion because that’s what your parents have introduced you to. Go to church every day but with no or little understanding of your purpose, religion teaches you to hate, scares you that you will go to hell, but what if you are already in hell?
Also, that you are told not to celebrate Ancestors Day. Why is everything that your see or hear has to be through someone else’s view? Do you even know that there is a bible out there called The “Cepher”, which has all those deleted scriptures when they amended the bible and introduced the New Testament in order to control you better?
I implore you to follow a spiritual law rather than religion, because religion was designed to help you connect with spirituality but not anymore. Spirituality requires you to be in harmony and in touch with the world that you live in and everything in it.
Spiritual messages and light can be carried by anyone you least expect but serves your spiritual journey as it teaches the wisdom to know when you are being taken for granted, how you relate with dissidents, and how to find peace above all. Seek spiritual guidance by meditating, spending some time alone quietly so, praying directly to God and guidance from your ancestors because you are a spiritual being with the ability to connect directly.
You hear news about economy and say that it does not concern you, yet worry when prices go up. You see in this world to survive, you need knowledge of politics, eco-social and cultural factors because all these come to play before you.
Ignore them at your own peril and be prepared to suffer.
When serious issues are discussed, it becomes a joke to all of you, but when things get wrong, you want answers. Answers from who when you spend most of your youth joking?
You agree to everything that comes.
The world requires knowledgeable people, where do you fall? Things not taught at school or being prepared for. If you want to change, be the change that you want to see in your world, do not expect to get it from anyone. They do not serve your interests and they will never do.
Even excuses are not going to help you, so charter your own path, and do it right now.
You are the future of this country and nothing stops you from being managers, CEOs, Drs, and lawyers, owners of things and not being made lapdogs and respecting the traditions that continue to oppress you more. What stops you from being the movers and shakers in your communities?
You let people in authority lie and continue to sell you the lie, while knowing to be. Please, when you become someone in power, may you do things differently from what is happening right now? Be the change and not be swallowed by leaders, power, and money like your brothers and sisters.
In fact, the greatest survival skills that you need out there is to be able to stand on your own against all odds. We know the majority of people are trying to make more money so that problems of this country do not apply to them and careless about social injustices taking place in front of them.
Sad thing for female youth is that those in power, are eager to sleep with you. In fact, the youth of this country is a bed for those in position of power to sleep in it, ibile ba sa kgathale (they care less).
It’s a common knowledge that some positions in government require female youth to sleep with those in power to be employed or to pay for employment with money they do not even have. If you refuse to pay or be in that bed, be prepared not to have everything this life offers because you are beating the hands that feeds or could feed you, however, I know not many are prepared to starve like that.
Chris Hani had this to say: “What I fear is that the liberators emerge as elitists, who drive around in Mercedes-Benzes and use the resources of this country… to live in palaces and to gather riches,”
Was he not being prophetic when you look at your own country right now? We are riddled with collapsing state institutions like ESKOM, DENEL, SABC, SAA, and PRASA. All being bailed out every year without consequential management.
Corruption is now endemic. It is a free-for-all, especially among members of the ruling elite who, famously, ‘did not join the struggle to be poor.’ Why are you just quiet when your future is being destroyed?
We are not going to change anything by keeping the status quo. You being handed t-shirts, food parcels and waiting on the government to give you everything for free. You need to be prepared to take what’s rightfully belongs to you as a youth by doing everything right.
Tapping into your Mind
I wish to see our youth taking charge of everything, challenging every norm, customs that are there. Setswana sa re “le ojwa le sale metsi”. I wish to see our youth being more informed and solve our problems using knowledge and insights and not violence.
I wish to see our youth not being easily bought with expensive whiskeys, girls being used as sex pawns for those in power and you guys being used as mere ice boys when your grandparents are in town, with their black SUVs, suits, blue lights and sending you around and running like headless chickens.
My dream for the youth of this country is, the youth that is not afraid to stand for the truth, speak for the truth, and fight for the truth.
Why as the youth of this country have you allowed yourselves to be captured and conditioned to move to adulthood under the same conditions and at a snail pace? Is it what Solomon Mahlangu fought for?
He was not afraid to lose his life so that his blood shall nourish the tree that shall bear the fruits of freedom. Amongst the others, he acquired his knowledge from reading-one of the books titled: the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire’s, which in essence attempt to help the oppressed fight back to regain their lost humanity and achieve full humanization by starting with acquiring knowledge about the concept of humanization itself.
Now today, the only thing that matters to the youth at this time of the year is to wear their school uniforms and go to taverns- even at their workplaces to celebrate, but there is nothing tangible that changes beyond that uniform.
No quest to obtain knowledge or you believe knowledge is only about academic books and which in fact is not.
Villages, cities and towns where you come from, you have sewerages running in the streets, herein Taung, we have Taung Dam that never runs dry, but we have villages that go for months without water. Our province is known as a pothole province, famous for failure to provide basic services, while the country has electricity problems.
Your government has brought in foreign (Cuban) doctors and engineers and tells you that they are best to train you, do work here for your government because SA does not have such skills. What have they done to their country, since they took power 26 years ago?
Imagine and NGO (Gift of the Givers) solving a water shortage at a public hospital (Raheem Moosa), and it is reported that the government have had a serious water problems at the said hospital without a solution. Our government would rather outsource a tender for water trucks to supply water at a huge public purse.
We have people seating on their minds and being paid to do that. All is fine with you?
In our mind, everything is just fine, you will see that check-in and photoshoot is better at Taung Dam, and that is what your mind tells you, and does not see any injustices going on before your own eyes.
We prefer American and Eurocentric movies and music than our own. We hate our own languages so much that even we talk to our toddlers in English at home and be proud to say, they do not know our mother tongue- African languages.
We shun our own, but embrace everything we do not know. For anyone who becomes vocal about the injustices and lack of service delivery, it is a common practice that they are being bought (money, material) for silence or to abandon the social justice cause- you know them, they are in your communities.
We expect developments to be brought to our villages and towns and not be part of them except as runners, employees, and consumers and all of this is normal to the black majority and its leadership. The mind is not thinking and that is exactly what they want, not to think beyond.
This is what Biko warned us about that, if we do not get careful, they will take our minds and use it on our behalf. We will be as dead men walking.
We go to schools just to be perfect employees, just to pass and not question the system used to teach us. We go to churches to be exploited in the name of God because we cannot pray for ourselves. We are so used to others doing things for us, and this is what we excel in SA, folding hands. How do you expect to be helped when you have not begun a journey of self-discovery to help yourself?
In fact, why do we even allow Mandarin/Swahili in our schools when we have not even developed our own languages to be languages of business? When are we going to stop pleasing others, emancipate ourselves, and prioritise our identity?
Do you know that our courts have adopted English as the medium of instruction? At the same time, we now have universities adopting our languages as official languages and even translating and interpreting modules into our own languages? Only English and Afrikaans are being developed and the black majority is just folding their arms.
Who is going to teach your children and grandchildren accounting, engineering in African languages? When you at the back of your mind saying, but we have not been taught this in African languages. It begins with you, your attitude towards your identity and you are failing already to think of the possibility of it being a reality.
Do you know one of the greatest writers of Setswana, Ntate Solomon Thekisho Plaatjie who was the first to write in his own mother tongue did not go far with school, but managed to translate one of William Shakespeare’s books, Comedy of Errors into Setswana and called it Diphoshophoso?
His jurisprudence is what we rely upon today to position the development of Setswana equally to English and Afrikaans.
Do you know we have people of other races becoming expects in African studies, indigenous knowledge systems and some are even customary law experts (Whites). If we are allowed into their (Eurocentric) systems, we do our best to close the doors for (on) our own people and mimic what has been done and try to excel in entrenching western/colonial standards.
Imagine being told that you cannot wear your traditional clothes inside a shopping mall by a black manager? Wearing your traditional clothes only during weddings but you do not want to be told that you have been captured?
This is because you being the custodians of this entire rich heritage have no interests at all in preserving your heritage. You see no value in it. You see nothing wrong that all the books that you have studied or used from Grade 1 to college or university has all been written by other races for you.
We have allowed ourselves to be the marketers of foreign products and fail to create our own economy because we do not like one another to succeed. Blacks are the greatest consumers of everything that they do not produce. Knowledge must be at the forefront of it. It is only through knowledge that I was able to tell an old person “O bua maaka” and not being punished for it. You know why, because knowledge has no boundaries, no age, and no experience.
Youth know a lot of things that people who lead you know nothing about. Only if you invest more in knowledge, you will be able to achieve what Biko wished to have witnessed, which is Black Consciousness.
It is the attitude of mind and he will be grateful to know that, you use knowledge to cause revolution, freedom, emancipation from mental enslavement, development, sustainability, peace, harmony, and independence.
It is through knowledge that you will begin to understand the system where you stay, what you get, who leads you, how you conduct business, how you relate with people, and over and above, how you survive. Because in the end, it is not going to be about the cars you drove, where you live, how much money you have made, but what impact you have made.
No matter how many material possessions you may have, they are going to vanish.
But with knowledge, you are able to know bad and good and still do good by questioning the injustices when you see it happening to someone else.
We have detached ourselves from knowledge hence they take advantage of us. We are not united, that is why they thrive in dividing and ruling us. They also use your ignorance to flourish. They are so good that youth has become their runner for illegal activities, girls are sex pawn, boys are known as ice boys, or when they need to rent a crowd, they know youth is their choice.
The youth know nothing, follow blindly, want parties, and that’s what they know that you are good at.
Professor Tumi Modisenyane is an Associate Professor at the North West University (Mahikeng campus). Modisenyane writes in his personal capacity and views raised in this article do not necessarily represent Taung DailyNews and its associates.
To read the whole speech, kindly visit Professor Mmusinyane’s Facebook page and get more details.
The Guardian 