Let’s reimagine youth development together

On January 14 this year I launched the consultative process for the National Youth Policy 2020. I made a clarion call to all stakeholders, in particular to young people, youth organisations and youth workers. My call was that every young person from all corners of the Republic must speak. They must own this youth policy formulation process and outcome.

I reiterated that the National Youth Policy 2020 is about the youth, for the youth and by the youth of South Africa. Nothing for us without us. This was not a call that I made lightly. It was a call that is deeply rooted in this post-apartheid government’s commitment to consulting stakeholders and communities in the policy development process. My call was rooted in my belief that young men and women have a critical role to play in their own development. Their views matter and their voices must be heard.

And so our journey continued as we consulted with our country’s most precious resource. We directly engaged youth in provincial, regional and local consultations across the nine provinces. We went to schools, shebeens, taxi ranks, bus stations and workplaces to speak with young people. We met key youth formations from across our diverse youth sector. We received over 100 written submissions on the NYP 2020 from varied youth voices across the country.

We could not meet all young people face to face. So we used social media platforms extensively. After all, that is where most young people are found. We conducted a twitterview on LiveSA and obtained more than 1 million impressions. In an hour of a twitterview, we were able to reach more young people than in a single consultative meeting.

Social media allowed us to not only speak with you, but for you to ask us questions and receive prompt responses. All NYP 2020 activities were put on the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Presidency to ensure that young people were always kept abreast of the consultative meetings happening in their area.

We reached about 100 000 young people with the #NYP 2020 campaign and got young people talking through the photos they took, holding up boards and a message of what they want to see in the National Youth Policy 2020.

We also used YouTube to post videos of the consultations. We used Flickr and Instagram to post pictures of you coming out in your numbers to speak to your government about your needs, interests and aspirations.

We heeded the call from young people to be more accessible and to keep the lines of communication open. That is why today we are launching an App on Mxit. The App is called Isago. Isago means “My Future” in the Setswana language. The app will allow you to track progress and implementation of the National Youth Policy 2020 and to remain engaged with us.

As I walked in shopping malls, travelled through airports, sat in restaurants, I had scores of young people come up to me to chat about the National Youth Policy 2020. I may have missed a flight or my food may have been left to get cold, but I was warmed and enriched by the many conversations I had with you about the critical issues facing youth development.

And so our journey brings us here to this National Youth Policy 2020 Consultative Conference. This conference is a further affirmation of the “Nothing for Us, Without Us” call as we gather over the next two days. At this conference we will present an updated version of the National Youth Policy 2020.

Our presentation includes a consolidation of all the input we received from you. We will give you a further opportunity to help sharpen the NYP 2020 through our dialogue in plenary and in panel discussions. So I need to warn you in advance… We are here to work.

Policy development is a challenging process. It requires us to truly understand the context in which we are located in order to make the appropriate policy choices. It is never neutral. Yes, policy development is about making choices, sometimes difficult ones. There are many social commentators and armchair critics today who contend that South Africa’s current socio-economic challenges are a result of this democratic government’s 20- year failure. They minimise the role and effects of our apartheid history. And they continue to labour under this fallacy. How do we explain our general and higher education challenges experienced today without going back to the education policy choices that the apartheid government made for us? How do we explain the low skills base among black people in general without understanding the skills development policy choices the apartheid government made for us?

As young people we have a responsibility to understand our past to truly comprehend and make sense of our present. We must debunk these fallacies that are tossed around, masquerading as the truth. But we also have a responsibility to shape the future. It is our future. And we must make the appropriate policy choices today that will shape our National Youth Policy 2020 for the next five years.

Allow me to speak more directly about the National Youth Policy 2020 that is in front of you. I will not go into the finer details of the policy as there will be further presentations on the key issues later today and tomorrow. Through the initial research we have undertaken we identified four priorities for the NYP 2020. These four priorities are:

lEnabling economic participation and transformation.

lFacilitating education, skills development and second chances (quality and access).

lHealth care and combating substance abuse.

lFacilitating nation-building and social cohesion.

The research tells us that:

On economic participation at 57.8 percent, the labour absorption rate for adults is almost twice that of young people at 30.8 percent. This is reflective of an economy that is not growing and is not allowing new entrants into the market.

Resolving the problem of youth unemployment must be done in tandem with the national initiatives of transforming the economy into a labour-absorbing economy. Most of what needs to be done for this to happen is articulated in the National Development Plan, the Industrial Policy Action Plan, The Youth Employment Accord and others.

The National Youth Policy 2020, drawing heavily on the National Development Plan and other existing redress policies, also begins to engage with youth black economic empowerment, economic redress as well as land reform.

How do we change the economy? How do we change its ownership and control? These are questions not only for economists and policymakers. These are questions that you must directly engage with at this conference. Our national unity is at stake here. For our national unity to be of substance, we have to address the ownership and control of the economy and transform it. Your ideas and your views are important on these matters and you must articulate them.

We need innovative youth entrepreneurs and youth co-operatives. These fresh ideas must propel young people to find a niche in the economy and transform it. The levels of entrepreneurship uptake among South African youth are still far too low when you compare ourselves to our Brics counterparts. Out of 10 young people walking into the NYDA offices, at least eight are looking for a job. Only two are interested in entrepreneurship. Young people have to be creators of jobs and not only seeking jobs. This is the primary reason for the NYDA’s grant programme for young entrepreneurs. It is designed to minimise risk and to stimulate youth entrepreneurship uptake.

Some of you correctly chastised us in our consultations for not opening up opportunities for youth in agriculture and the agricultural value chain. You told us that land reform is too slow and it impedes youth agricultural development. The clarion call is: We want to be farmers, we want land. Give us land. Let’s engage further on this aspect in this conference.

On skill development, of the 1 million young people who exit the schooling system annually, 65 percent exit without achieving a Grade 12 certificate. Less than 4.3 percent of persons aged 18 to 29 were enrolled at a higher education institution in the country.

Large numbers of youth, who possess no professional or technical skills, and who exited the education system prematurely, are effectively unemployable. About 60 percent of unemployed youth aged below 35 years have never worked. Without a targeted intervention, they will remain in the fringes of society. The National Youth Policy 2020 picks up mainly from the National Skills Accord and the NDP to articulate how skills development will be made accessible to the majority of young people.

It was an ordinary morning when a young girl, aged 15 years, boarded a school bus on her way to school. The doors flung open. A gunman boarded the bus and walked up to the 15-year-old girl. He drew his gun and pulled the trigger, shooting her in the head. The story made news all over the world. Who was this girl? Why was she shot? What was her crime? Malala Yousafzai was that young girl. Her crime, in the eyes of the Taliban, was to insist on the rights of girls to get an education. Why was the Taliban so afraid of the 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai getting an education. The answer to this question was summed up by our father, Nelson Mandela, when he said: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” For her courageous youth activism, Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

We may not have the Taliban to contend with, but we have our own challenges around education. We must make education fashionable. We have to improve the access to education. And at the same time we have to improve the quality of education.

What should young people be studying? Are young people studying towards the qualifications needed by the labour market? Are we persuading young people to study towards the needs and opportunities of a changing economy? These, too, are important questions you must deliberate on and give direction.

On behavioural challenges, of the total number of deaths due to assault and intentional self-harm in the country, 69 and 59 percent of them respectively, occurred among those aged 15 to 34 years.

The abuse of alcohol, particularly, is directly linked to high levels of violence and motor vehicle accidents. Among the youth, there is an increase in the level of experimentation with drugs and alcohol. Who can forget the mother who killed her own son because she could no longer bear living with someone who was no longer the son she raised because of the drug induced behaviour?

The six leading natural causes of death for the age group 15 to 34 in 2013 were tuberculosis (accounting for 14 percent of all deaths in this age group); human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease (10 percent); other viral diseases (6 percent); influenza and pneumonia (5 percent); certain disorders involving the immune mechanism (3.0 percent); and intestinal infectious diseases (3 percent). A total of these six causes all associated with HIV disease, indicating risky behaviour in terms of sexuality.

This is collaborated by other evidence. In a study conducted by the HSRC among learners, the findings for sexually active youth were that 47 percent had two or more sexual partners in their short lifetime, only 33 percent practiced consistent condom use, and 18 percent had been pregnant or have made someone pregnant. This is worrying.

The National Youth Policy 2020 draws heavily from the drug master plan spearheaded by the Department of Social Development and suggests a myriad of interventions. This includes the building of public drug treatment centres, one for each province and stricter enforcement of municipality by-laws dealing with restricting access to alcohol. The National Youth Policy 2020 also talks to increased access to reproductive health care services and information so that young people are empowered to make correct choices in relation to their sexuality.

On nation-building and social cohesion, there is a lot that must be done for the creation of a non-racial society. Urinating on a taxi driver; forcing university employees to eat food “urinated upon”; mocking Africans by painting faces black and dressing up as maids; mowing down black people in Skierlik informal settlement, all these hideous behaviours were committed by young people who grew up in a free and democratic South Africa.

How do we explain this? How do we respond to the racists that tell black people that they must forget apartheid? And yet this confident fringe of racists practice the very same apartheid behaviour. The very racist discourse in relation to the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign is scary, where some white people were calling black people baboons.

This takes place after 20 years of democracy. However, it is encouraging to note that youth activists have taken a stand at UCT and indeed around the country. Their youthful energy in challenging the powers that be over racist symbols is inspiring. It opens up opportunities for a constructive racial discourse. It opens up opportunities to redefine the future. Their brave actions have dispelled the notion that South Africa’s youth are depoliticised and apathetic. Young people should take advantage of this momentum. Let’s take the transformation discourse beyond symbols. Let’s lead this discourse towards the transformation of the economy and beyond.

There is still a lot of work to be done in bringing about a non-racial society as promised by the constitution. The NYP 2020 encourages that young people themselves must lead. They must display their leadership with acts of solidarity in their communities, so that the ubuntu mantra of “I am because you are” lives in communities.

The National Youth Service programme still holds promise for our nation-building and social cohesion efforts. But we have to strengthen this critical programme as part of the NYP 2020. More NYS programmes must be developed within government, civil society and the private sector to allow for massification. Our national flag, our national anthem and our national symbols are important for young people to learn about. They help solidify us as a nation and provide an edifice towards strengthening our national identify and fostering patriotism.

Youth development is everybody’s business. It’s not just the NYDA’s business. While the NYDA is an important agency of government, the agenda of youth development is too gigantic to be left to one agency only. Through the National Youth Policy 2020, we will ensure that the co-ordination, mainstreaming and oversight of youth development and youth work is not only going to be what the NYDA does, but must be mainstreamed in the work of government and other social partners. The NYP 2020 must convene government in its entirety towards the youth development agenda. Through the soon to be released Integrated Youth Development Strategy, very clear and specific targets will be set. Strong oversight will be provided to ensure that government indeed mainstreams youth development.

So I challenge you, as I challenge myself – Lets REIMAGINE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT. Let’s push the boundaries. Let’s put ourselves out there.

Let’s reimagine youth development together.