June 16: A legacy of struggle, a prosperous future unfulfilled
Township residents and schoolchildren re-enact the 1976 Soweto uprising.
Image: Picture: AP
Given the brunt of poverty, inequality and unemployment that young people perpetually face in this country, it is legitimate to ask what it is that we are expecting an increasingly impoverished and disenfranchised youth to celebrate this Youth Month.
Are we merely paying lip service to the legacy of the class of '76, or are we genuinely committed to addressing the systemic challenges that young people are currently facing?
As we commemorate the sacrifices of the class of '76, we must equally ask ourselves: What are WE celebrating? Is it merely the bravery of the past, or are we also acknowledging the failures of the present?
It's been 49 years since the brave students of 1976 stood up against the apartheid regime's attempt to impose Afrikaans as the language of instruction in black schools.
Their determination and sacrifice sparked a national movement that would change the course of South African history.
As Seth Mazibuko, one of the courageous committee members who coordinated the June 16 uprising so eloquently, puts it, in a reflective conversation, 'The memory of the moment of the 16th of June 1976 forever sits in my heart and my mind. It felt like an awakening of a generation.
''A moment in history where, regardless of gender, age, geography, and ethnicity, the mission was one: To say enough! to injustice, segregation and indignity in both the education system at the time as well as society at large.
'We were very organised, and what most people may not be aware of was that this day was secretly well planned in a very short space of time to reach thousands of students across the country. While we knew that this was a cause much bigger than ourselves, we were determined to no longer put up with the oppression which our parents seemed too demoralised to do anything about.'
'What is now heartbreaking to witness in 2025 is how many of the struggles we fought for, which claimed thousands of lives, still plague today's youth. How is this possible?'
The students' fight was not solely about language, but very much about equality and human rights. Thousands lost their lives in the ensuing violence, but their legacy lives on. Yet, as stated by Mr Mazibuko, despite the progress we've made as a nation, many of the same struggles that were hard fought for continue to persist. To this day, South Africa's youth face unprecedented challenges, and the numbers are stark.
According to the Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey, in the first quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate for young people aged 15-34 stood at 46.2% overall, with a staggering 62.4% for those aged 15-24.
The Not in Employment, Education, and Training (NEET) trajectory is a particular concern. Of the 10.3 million young people aged 15-24 years in Q1 of 2025, 37.1% of this number fell into this category. This translates to a significant portion of our youth being disconnected from opportunities that could help them build a better future.
It is important to note that these alarming figures are more than just statistics; they represent a lost generation of young people who are being left behind. Without access to the prerequisite knowledge, skills and platforms necessary to develop their capacities, young people are more likely to fall prey to poverty, crime, and social unrest. Thereby signalling the alarm bells of a country in crisis.
Our education system also finds itself in a critical juncture. Of the learners who start Grade 1, around 40% will drop out before they complete matric. This contributes to the year-on-year increase in the NEET cluster, with dire long-term consequences for our economy and individuals directly affected by it.
It goes without saying that as individuals get older, their prospects for development diminish, and their fullest potential remains unfulfilled.
Tebogo Suping is a sustainable development specialist with extensive experience in leading national and regional youth empowerment, governance and civic education programmes.
Image: Supplied
In addition, the cycle of poverty, inequality, and unemployment continues to burden our youth. Many are disillusioned, and their potential is being wasted. Our prisons are filling up with young people, primarily black and male, who are either perpetrators or once victims of violent crime themselves. These are no doubt symptoms of a failing state that is unequivocally failing its youth, and the list of these countless socio-economic disparities goes on and on, begging the critical question of what kind of future we are building for our young people
This is because while our government claims to stand for non-racist, non-sexist and democratic ideals, the reality on the ground tells a much different story, and to turn this tide, we need a multifaceted approach that prioritises government accountability and transparency.
How might we solve these pressing issues?
Rooting out state corruption is essential to ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to address the growing challenges faced by our youth. This includes implementing targeted interventions that provide education, training, and decent work tailored to the needs of young people.
Moreover, collaboration and partnership are crucial between the government, civil society, and the private sector to provide mentorship, skills development, and meaningful job opportunities that can help young people build a better future.
By investing in our youth, we can unlock their potential and create a more prosperous and equitable society.
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Daily Maverick
34 minutes ago
- Daily Maverick
A discussion about the coloured community and other conversation-stoppers
Against my better judgement, I stepped into a discussion on social media. It was one of those discussions that is marked by conversation-stoppers, deflections and presentations of innocence that is so de rigueur in South African society. It was a discussion about actual or perceived marginalisation of the coloured community in South Africa. This is a country built on decades of racism, but there are no racists. It is a country where citizens compare miseries, where individuals or groups of individuals attempt, constantly, to outmanoeuvre one another in the races to show who is or has been most persecuted, whose persecution matters most, and where the country's myriad problems are explained by monocausal simplicities and convenience. None of these is, of course, unique to South Africa. Conversation-stoppers are swung about like a rapier, slashing, and killing conversations, dead. You may say, for instance, that there may be a reason why people are opposed to your (Caligulan) brutality and cruelty, and the conversation-stopper is that you harbour an ancient hatred of the cruel brute and his people caught in flagrante delicto, so you cannot, possibly be intellectually honest. You may say that someone is wilfully marginalised through some biblical punishment where the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children. The deflection is slipped in; the children have been and will always be guilty, and exploit their intergenerational privileges, which, in some ways, may well be true. As a former colleague said after I admonished her for abusing a (white) child of about six or seven running through the newsroom: 'A snake gives birth to a snake.' This logic – hard to dispute the snake-gives-birth-to-a-snake, or kill them in infancy before they kill you – has been applied to present-day conflicts where innocent children are being killed almost daily. If I have not made it clear previously, I should do it again, here: I don't particularly care for identity politics or race-based politics, and I am not a specialist of coloured politics… there are people who, I am sure, are better placed for this purpose. All of this does not make me blind to the way privileges, powers and influences are handed down to successive generations, and how later generations will conspire to protect such privileges. It is an empirically verifiable fact that power and influence, privileges and benefits (the various forms of capital, political, financial, social or symbolic) accumulated over more than 300 years do not evaporate within 30 years… it is power and privilege that is vertically segmented. We speak, in this respect, about the 'development thesis' in terms of which powers, material and otherwise (ownership of property, development of technology and knowledge production, in general), tend to develop over time and become more powerful. When these powers are under threat, or even questioned rhetorically, those who wield the power feel 'uncomfortable', or 'fragile', and egads! they cry persecution, injustice and oppression, conveniently forgetting their (historical) roles and functions in getting us to where we are. Coloured community concerns and the deflection Let's leave all that as a backdrop, and return to my brief foray into the discussion of the coloured community I mentioned above. First, I should set out those nasty racial classifications, definitions and conceptions of purity and belonging. I refer hereafter to black people to exclude those South Africans who are classified coloured, and considered to be 'not black enough' or 'non-African'. Again, my personal identity affiliations or lack thereof (political, racial, ethnic or cultural) are set aside. The conversation I refer to went something like this: A coloured guy stands up and explains that the coloured community is marginalised, especially in the Western Cape. Also in Panayaza Lesufi's Gauteng, it should be said, and all of which makes a nonsense of the non-racialism that we fought for in South Africa. Before the topic of actual or perceived marginalisation is even considered, the host of the discussion deflects and asks why the coloured community persists with their coloured identity. Absent are the facts that the Afrikaner nationalists created the vile and contemptible racial classification system, and the African nationalists have simply adopted what has always been a vile and contemptible racial classification system. Those are just the facts. The Afrikaner nationalists may tell us that they meant well. I am absolutely sure that the African nationalists have only the best interests of South Africa in mind. That's the thing about oppressive or unjust regimes: Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot did not say they were going to kill millions of people. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler did not say, up front, that they would be responsible for the death of more than 100 million people in Europe. (See this essay by my favourite 20th-century historian, Eric Hobsbawm) They meant well, no? The National Party (Afrikaner nationalist) and the ANC (African nationalists) would proclaim innocence, to be sure. Julius Malema's ethno-nationalism of a particular kind, where those people whom he considers to be non-African don't matter and don't belong. His staunchest of followers would tell you, I am sure, that he means well… Coloured community concerns and denials, and counter-accusations It's marvellous to behold. Frightening is probably a better word, but never mind. Criminal organisations or unjust regimes have at least one thing in common. Privileged people who are reminded of their ill-begotten status and the forms of capital mentioned above, have the same habit. Deny everything (we are not racist), admit nothing (we worked hard for our money) and make counter-accusations (you're racist/reverse racist). Before seriously considering the cries of the coloured community's leaders, the counter-accusation (a veritable conversation-stopper) is that coloured people are racist, and have always been racist towards black people. It does not help, of course, that very many coloured people have shimmied up to the party of white settlers, the DA, as they did to the National Party with the Tricameral Parliament. If we accept that more than one thing can be true at the same time – that the coloured community has been left behind in whatever resembles a peace and prosperity dividend of the democratic era, and that coloured people have shimmied up to the illiberal, undemocratic and unjust forces in the country – the least one can do is listen, and look at the evidence. Instead, when coloured groups raise issues of crime, disproportionate incarceration, unemployment, drug abuse (all social problems that stem from poverty and alienation), the black African response is: well, coloureds are racist, or they (themselves) reproduce myths about being coloured, when the African nationalists actually reinvoked and reapplied the vile and contemptible racial classification system – because the higher you are on the scale of racial superiority, the more money there is to be made. For instance, when the Dutch, then British, and then Settler Colonialists (during the Afrikaner nationalist era) placed and kept whites on the top rung, they reaped the benefits of everything; from the proceeds of gold and diamonds, to agriculture and education, which helps explain the development thesis referred to above. The main problem, the way I see it, is that in this great-tjank – everyone is in tears about being persecuted and we're in a state of national paralysis – claims of eternal innocence give one group a monopoly on persecution (they have been the most persecuted in history), and gives that group a free reign with meting out punishment (everyone else must suffer biblical punishment and, anyway, a snake gives birth to a snake), and nobody can be as innocent as the ones who claim eternal innocence, and nobody can be innocent enough. As a pessimist, I don't expect things to get any better for the coloured community. This is quite apart from declinism, although it is profoundly Panglossian to be positive. I will leave one example. Somewhere in the Northern Cape, somewhere between Springbok and Upington, there is a black man working on a farm. Once he got a job on the farm, he brought his family from Mpumalanga. Now, let me be clear. As much as South Africa belongs to everyone who lives in it, people are free to move around the country as they wish! Now, that man from Mpumalanga was employed after a coloured man from the area was replaced because black economic empowerment and affirmative action policies (according to the farmer) awards more points for employing a 'black African' as opposed to a coloured. The first problem with this is that the area has been predominantly coloured/Khoi/San for centuries. The ANC has had a policy of converting every corner of the country to reflect the demographics of South Africa; in other words, if, as Jimmy Manyi said when he was still in the ANC and a government spokesperson, coloureds are overconcentrated in any particular region, that had to be changed 'to reflect the demographics of South Africa'. This means that if there happens to be a street in which coloured people are in the majority, as in most of the Northern Cape, that has to change to the point where the street represents the approximately 80% of 'black Africans' in the country. It does not end on the streets of townships. I shan't complain, but I was told that I should forget about applying for an academic post at UCT as it would be futile, because the institution would rather employ a 'real African' from any of the 54 states on the continent than a coloured person. All told, the great-tjank has made us all wrestle over who has been most persecuted, who faces the most injustice and who has the right to mete out punishment, because, you know, a snake gives birth to a snake and at the extremes you must kill a baby before the baby grows up and kills you.
Daily Maverick
35 minutes ago
- Daily Maverick
Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu — Now is the winter of our discontent
Ah, Chief Dwasaho! I write as one frozen stiff by the icy breath of our weather this week, which was worsened, not by cold fronts and damaging winds, but by the harsh realities revealed in the Statistics South Africa reports. According to the latest figures from StatsSA, in the first quarter of 2025 our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by a maiden 0.1% — yes, not a typo, not a rounding error, just a whisper of movement above economic rigor mortis. When annualised, that translates into a lukewarm 0.8% year-on-year. The only warm patch came courtesy of agriculture, surging by 15.8%; clearly, cabbages are doing more heavy lifting than the Cabinet. If agriculture were a currency, I'd wager it has flourished under the recent sunshine of Baas John Steenhuisen's melanin-light leadership — though perhaps all it ever needed was a little brown boost in the soil and the soul. So, my dearest leader, if our economy was the weather, it would be a bone-chilling fog bank rolling in from all sides with no visibility, no direction, and certainly no sunshine in sight. It is a climate where only those with thick skin and thicker wallets survive. For the rest of us? It's winter without end, comrade. A cold front of missed opportunities blows through a nation still waiting for the warmth of the fundamental economic reforms promised in 2018, when I was 10kg lighter, with not a strand of grey hair. The need for immediate action is NOW. Frostbitten As I dived, nose first, into the frostbitten pages of StatsSA's latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, I emerged gasping, winded not from the effort but from the sheer chill of our labour market's trajectory. The official unemployment rate rose to a bone-cracking 32.9% in the first quarter of 2025, up from 31.9% in the last quarter of 2024. That's 8.2 million South Africans left out in the economic cold — up from 7.9 million — huddled around the dwindling embers of hope, awaiting a job to fall like manna from heaven. The expanded unemployment rate, which includes discouraged jobseekers (like me), swelled to a stormy 43.1%. That's not an economy with 'low clouds' — that's a Category 5 unemployment cyclone bearing down on the nation, with little shelter in sight. Gauteng added a gentle breeze of +9,000 jobs, while the Western Cape enjoyed a sunny spell with +49,000, and the Free State contributed a faint +4,000, a drizzle of progress. But for the rest of Mzansi? It's all nightmarish: KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the Northern Cape all reported job losses, a frostbite of opportunity. The stormfront hit the rural provinces hardest, where economic activity retreats like sunlight in mid-July. Perhaps everyone has seized on the National Prosecuting Authority's snail-pace strategy to prosecute thieves in Gucci suits. But for minors, we hear the same story: to use KZN police commissioner Lieutenant- General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi's chilling words: 'Unfortunately, there's an engagement inside,' and the suspect was fatally wounded. Economic Richter scale Our economy is wobbling through yet another tremor, an earthquake clocking in at 5.6 on the economic Richter scale, just as the country flounders without a discernible compass. The much-vaunted National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 remains a glossy wish list; the New Growth Path, launched by Ebrahim Patel in 2010, has long fizzled into policy vapour. And let's not even mention the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP) of 2020, a blueprint that has yet to see the light of day since its launch. We've dwelt in this winter of our discontent since 2009 — that's 16 years of frost, shivering in the dark with no economic fruit in sight. My leader, it has been a year since the markets heaved a collective sigh of relief following the cobbling together of the Government of National Unity (GNU). Investor confidence flickered, the rand strengthened, and — momentarily — the economic barometer pointed north. But alas, no fresh economic policy has emerged from the fog. Meanwhile, our industrial strategy (now a series of industry-specific master plans) continues to clash with the Treasury's fiscally (im)prudent stance, and the South African Reserve Bank remains fixated on inflation targeting, wielding high interest rates like a blunt snow shovel. It's a jigsaw of clashing fronts, a high-pressure system of indecision, the crosswinds of ideology holding the country to ransom. In meteorological terms, this isn't merely a cold snap; it's a prolonged polar vortex: policies fracturing like ice sheets, implementation frozen stiff, and gale-force confusion sweeping through every sector. And the question that keeps me awake in the long economic night is this: how do we find warmth when we can't even agree on the thermostat? The economy is the heartbeat of any democracy — and, dare I say, the very essence of the state. Bleeding jobs Yet it remains locked in a low-growth, high-interest-rate trap, bleeding jobs with every tick of the GDP clock. Are we not merely hoping the thermometer will fix the fever while the patient quietly slips into shock? While I paced the lounge on a pallid Tuesday evening, contemplating ways to become an economic wizard, the anthracite fire sputtered with dirty yet oddly soothing warmth. Suddenly, like a frost front through a broken window, a major newsbreak occurred: you, my leader, in all your infinite incandescence, have appointed an Eminent Persons Group. Wait for it: 'To guide and champion the National Dialogue.' Not to draft, not to deliver — to guide, like torchbearers in a tunnel with no exit. Moreover, we're not stopping at one symbolic gathering. As Head of State, you are summoning all and sundry to a full-blown National Convention. One can only hope the guest list excludes Comrade Jimmy Manyi and his former boss uBaba kaDuduzane lest this turns into a Radical Economic Transformation revival festival. The first sitting of this National Convention, scheduled for 15 August 2025, will set the agenda. Imagine! The second, pencilled in for January 2026, promises to 'reinforce our shared values and adopt a common vision and programme of action'. What does it mean? In short, the Eminent Persons Group is like a cocktail: a retired judge mixing with a former apartheid politician, a peace activist, a Grand Slam champion, a rocket scientist, a mountain climber, unionists, and the odd former businessperson or two — all now expected to guide and champion our National Dialogue. In weather terms, it's akin to entrusting the thermostat to a room full of thermometers — none of which agree on Fahrenheit or Celsius. Yet this isn't intended to draft an agenda — no, not at all. If it doesn't set the agenda, what does it mean to 'guide and champion'? Jobs are haemorrhaging, growth is nonexistent, and interest rates freeze whatever sizzle the economy once had. Budgetary greenhouse Meanwhile, on another planet entirely, we have assembled a budgetary greenhouse stocked with 400 members of the National Assembly, 90 from the National Council of Provinces, and a bloated Cabinet of 75 ministers and deputies. Yet the national agenda now rests on the shoulders of a hodgepodge of rugby captains, soccer coaches, ex-judges, clergy, and authors. These noble souls are expected to steer our industrial, fiscal, monetary, and legislative future. Until 2026, this country will remain without a growth-inducing economic policy. Instead, our 'captains of sport and clergy' are expected to grind out the results of policymaking while inflation waltzes with the Treasury and the Reserve Bank storms through with hawkish winds. All the while, the Democratic Alliance will persist with its courtroom battles dressed up as a moral crusade, trying to undo the very legislative frameworks that remain the ANC's only family silver after 31 years in power. Laws that were written by men and women who understood the demands of our Constitution, the need 'to heal' and the imperative 'to redress'. And these are the very words the DA finds offensive: heal and redress. If that's not an emergency, I am at a loss. Comrade Leadership, why deploy 31 innocent souls when you already command a Cabinet twice that size? This isn't a participatory democracy; it's a bureaucratic iceberg — 90% protocol, 10% purpose, masking a freeze on real policy action. The absurdity is staggering. Policy inertia and the endless punting of cans down the road of conventions won't win votes, nor will it heal the wounds of the present — let alone those of the past.
The South African
2 hours ago
- The South African
Mayibuye Mandela charges 'refugees', AfriForum with treason
Mayibuye Mandela, the great-grandson of Nelson Mandela's sister, has laid charges of treason against the group of Afrikaner 'refugees' who arrived in the US as 'persecuted' people. The outspoken politician also charged activist organisations AfriForum and Solidarity Movement for their comments about South Africa. On his X account, Mayibuye Mandela – who refers to himself as 'Nelson Mandela's great grandson' – revealed that he had officially taken action against the group of Afrikaner 'refugees'. Mayibuye posted official documents stating that he had laid a charge of treason against the group, as well as Afrikaner rights organisations, AfriForum, and Solidarity Movement. In the papers, Mayibuye accused the 'refugees' and the organisation of spreading 'fake news' and a 'false narrative' of a 'white genocide' in South Africa. The 30-year-old stated that the 'refugees' had violated numerous laws, including: Incitement to cause public harm or racial hatred over their 'propaganda'. Misinformation and Cyber Defamation for 'causing reputational harm to South Africa'. Immigration Act for 'knowingly submitting false claims of persecution'. Apart from being charged by Mayibuye Mandela, AfriForum is also facing a treason probe after four dockets of high treason were opened against it. The lobby group has been condemned for calling for the US to 'intervene' in domestic affairs. It has also been accused of spreading misinformation about the Expropriation Act. Afrikaner 'refugees' depart South Africa for the US. Image: X/ According to reports, the Haws are currently interviewing witnesses in their investigation. Hawks head, Godfrey Lebeya, said: 'These kinds of matters need to be approached carefully. We are dealing with a serious crime here.' AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel has repeatedly claimed that he was 'not concerned' over the probe. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 . Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp , Facebook , X, and Bluesky for the latest news.
