E Molewa: Youth Month celebration

16 June 2007

Comrade Programme Director
Comrades
All protocol observed

Let us begin by remembering that over a period of about 350 to 400 years,
people many of them young died so that we could be here today, free in a
democracy.

Whenever I have to address an audience of mainly young people I cannot help
but remember the words of a famous song:

"You are the child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars,
You have a right to be here."

I remember these words particularly today because as we celebrate the 31st
anniversary of the revolution of 16 June 1976, our young people seem to have
forgotten that they have a right to be here and that the future belongs to
them.

I say they have forgotten that they have a right to be here on earth, here
in South Africa and here in the North West province because many do not seem to
want to change this world, change our country and change our province in a way
similar to how the young generation of the 70s changed the history of South
Africa. Partly because of the change they brought to this country we are here
today as free men and women in a country with the greatest potential in Africa
and quite possibly in the world.

Just last week we had the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL)
march to the Union Buildings with thousands of young people. Why did they do
it? Because they wanted to highlight the plight of joblessness among young
people. We salute them for this, for they were in effect saying young people
have a right to be here and having a right to be here means you have a right to
jobs and opportunities of making a living for it is our commitment as a country
that we shall strive to provide a better life for all.

It is precisely because of his awareness of our debt as a country, to our
young people that President Mbeki in this year's State of the Nation Address
(SONA), celebrated government's surpassing of the 10 000 target in increasing
the number of young people in the National Youth Service (NYS). To reinforce
his awareness of the importance of ever increasing opportunities for our young
people, President Mbeki went on to commit government to a further increase of
20 000 in the number of our young people in the programme. Beyond that he
promised another 30 000 opportunities for young volunteers in community
development initiatives and another 5 000 slots in the Expanded Public Works
Programme (EPWP). Those numbers say one thing and one thing only, our
government affirms your right to be here.

You have a right to be here, therefore fight against alcohol and drug
addiction. You have a right to be here, so face HIV and AIDS and fight them
with all your might. You have a right to be here, therefore make sure that you
exploit all the education opportunities that come your way. You have a right to
be here so make use of the training opportunities offered by the NYS scheme,
the EPWP and the Community Development Workers' (CDWs) initiative.

At our level as a province we also say you have a right to be here and you
are entitled to every possible opportunity to make your life better than the
misery visited by apartheid upon your brothers and sisters in the seventies and
the 80s and the nineties and years and decades and centuries before 1976.

We join the President of our country in reconfirming the need to provide
quality education, skills development, good health and work opportunities for
our young people.

In our own State of the Province Address (SOPA) this year we announced our
own recruitment of 1 000 young people into the NYS Volunteer Campaign. We
promised another 1 000 engagements through 10 of our departments which already
have plans in this regard. Additional to that, we committed to employing
another 500 in the EPWP.

We do, however, understand that the real investment in our young people must
be in education for through education no one ever failed to rise above the
adversities of life. Through education no one ever failed to climb the highest
peaks and see lands of opportunity beyond and up to the horizon.

Our approach to education is a comprehensive one including as it does a
total restructuring of the school system, addressing the plight of the farm
child, providing schools with the necessary resources, embarking on
massification through the construction of Mega Schools, providing nutrition in
schools and ensuring the availability of scholar transport. We have also
provided at least 131 bursaries.

You have a right to be here. That is what informs our approach to you.
Because you have a right to be here, our working group on skills in the
Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS) is addressing the question of
training as part of the bigger national project called the Accelerated and
Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA).

Even, however, as we emphasise government's role in youth development and
empowerment the time has come for us to louder than we have ever done before
insist rather than continue pleading for the private sector to invest in our
young people through bursaries, experiential learning opportunities,
internships, job opportunities and any other methods possible.

Too often we hear complaints about skills shortages but where do we expect
these skills to come from if we benefit from the country but do not plough back
as much as we really should? Let us today send a call which reverberates in the
corridors and boardrooms of our corporates and say an investment in the young
people of our country is the best possible form of investment.

The messenger, however, is the most important factor in how a message is
responded to. If therefore we want any message about young people to reach our
intended destination and have a desired effect, let it be made by the young
people themselves. That is how the ANCYL was born, with young people insisting
on making their voices heard.

Speaking of the ANCYL, I must bemoan the fact that not more of our young
people are in that important structure. If our young people do not actively
involve themselves in matters to do with the future of our country it is indeed
a sad day for our hard-fought freedom and democracy.

I say this in a context where many among our young people forget that ours
was a past over which we had very little control but our future is one where we
can exert very positive influence. Life must, yes, include kwaito but also
transcend it to touch on the critical idea of reclaiming our identity for it is
a loss of identity which is at the heart of our dislocation and displacement as
the young people of South Africa.

Ours is an identity of struggle and commitment to human rights and community
development. In the 80s, at the height of repression by the apartheid
government, it is the young people who kept our communities united and focusing
on building rather than destroying. Many are challenges facing our communities
today but our young people are nowhere to be seen.

As I say these words I am reminded of a conference of young people from all
over Africa, held in Tshwane in 2004. Among the issues on the conference agenda
were the plight of the women and children in Darfur, women and children living
with HIV and AIDS and the African cultural heritage.

That left me in no doubt that here was a cadre of young people who truly and
fully understood their place as the future leaders of our country and our
continent.

I was particularly excited by the question of a cultural heritage because it
is through our history and traditions that we evolve and it is from them that
we assume a specific identity. Any confusion about your cultural heritage is
bound to lead to confusion about your own identity and that in turn is bound to
lead to an uncertain future.

Knowing and taking pride in your identity is an act of self confidence, one
which makes you move forward with conviction in who you are and where you
should be going. It should not be that we become ashamed of our past to a point
of trying to assume identities which are not ours. In a poem entitled
"Ancestors", Dudley Randall, an African American poet makes a point of
expressing pride in his ancestry despite other people's glorification of their
own ancestors. He says,

"Why are our ancestors always kings and princes and never the common people?
Was the old country a democracy where every man was a king? Or did the slave
catchers steal only the aristocrats and leave the field hands labourers, street
cleaners, garbage collectors, dish washers, cooks and maids behind?

My own ancestor (research reveals) was a swineherd, who tended the pigs in
the Royal Pigsty and slept in the mud among the hogs.

Yet I'm as proud of him as of any king or prince dreamed up in fantasies of
bygone glory."

When our President introduced us as a country to the notion of an African
Renaissance he was raising questions of the reclamation of our identity as an
African nation. After years of our imitation of western philosophies and way of
life we needed to revisit our roots, redefine ourselves and place ourselves in
a space and milieu we could relate to. If you try to be what you are not you
end up being a poor copy of what you are imitating.

Thirteen years into our freedom and democracy, indeed, we have become an
African country active in matters of interest to Africa and infusing our
policies with African philosophies such as Ubuntu/Botho. It is for that reason
that social concerns such as job creation and poverty alleviation are the
foundation of our socio-economic agenda.

In respect of an African identity rooted in socio-economic concerns and the
welfare of fellow human beings, I think our young people still have some way to
go. I think as a society we have exposed our young people to influences which
emphasise individuality more than collective identity. We have not done enough
to introduce our young people to the idea of the common good, that
understanding that I cannot be content when all around me is discontent and
unhappiness, I cannot eat when people around me are hungry.

We have to do more to introduce our young people to the notion that you live
not for yourself but for others in order to find fulfilment in life.
Accordingly we should continue to encourage the spirit of Letsema and
voluntarism, that idea of going out to assist anywhere you can in your
community and make a difference in the lives of others.

It may be that our media is not helping in the creation of a new type of
young person for our country. It may be that the portrait of life that we see
in some of our soapies, in particular, is one which does not promote social
morality. We may be emphasising unfettered and unprincipled materialism at the
expense of regard for other people. We may be advocating an "everything goes"
and "the end justifies the means" type of mentality.

The portrayal of young women, specifically, in some of our tabloids and
soapies is dangerously close to making them mere physical and sexual objects a
little removed from prostitutes. One, however, never hears the voice of young
people raised against this. It seems to me that as young people you should be
concerned about the image created about the youth for it is out of the popular
images you see that some of you create their own images of themselves.

It is also within that context that I wish to refer to the question of
celebrities as role models. The images portrayed by some of our celebrities
should definitely be challenged in the context of nation building. It cannot be
that we are content with a picture of a nation where to be popular and/or
famous gives you a licence to live a reckless life while, whether you admit it
or not you have an influence on impressionable young people.

Some of our failure to convince young people about abstinence or safe sex as
part of our fight against HIV and AIDS is caused by pictures of carelessness
demonstrated by people they consider to be their role models.

Any concern by young people about HIV and AIDS then becomes particularly
welcome as it would be more effective to have young people talking to other
young people about this the most dangerous challenge we have ever faced as a
nation.

The reality of our situation is that we already have a number of people
infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. That, therefore, calls for interventions
to make the situation tolerable for those involved. In this regard one of the
most effective interventions is home based care, where AIDS sufferers are
visited and assisted with basic services such as bathing and feeding, where
necessary. It also entails emotional and moral support, friendship and
companionship.

This is something that young people could be involved in.

Remember, there is nothing greater than giving love to those in dire need of
it. Lucille Clifton writes about the centrality of love in life when in a poem
entitled "December" she says,

"The end of a thing is never the end, something is always being born like a
year or a baby. I don't understand where the whole thing's at."

"It's just about love," his Mama smiles.
"It's all about love and you know about that."

It is this sense of compassion for fellow human beings which we would like
to see engendered in our young people if we are to develop into a country both
human and humane in character. As future leaders of our country you are a
mirror of where the country can be expected to be in the future. You are the
custodians of the survival of our nation.

It is against this background that you are expected to familiarise
yourselves with national issues such as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE); the
EPWP; the idea of CDWs; ward committees and our role continentally and
internationally, especially where the African Union (AU), New Partnership for
Africa's Development (Nepad), the African Parliament and the United Nations
(UN) are concerned.

It is part of our nation building effort to provide vehicles such as
Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) for you to access resources for viable
entrepreneurial ventures so that some of you can be job creators instead of
employees.

Educationally we would like to see more and more of you in further education
and training (FET) institutions as well as universities of technology rather
than purely academic institutions so that we can increase our skills base,
especially in those pursuits such as Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) upon which our competitiveness as a nation hinges in a world of
globalisation.

Make sure that as young people you are adequately informed about
learnerships and other development opportunities so that you can help your
brothers and sisters and friends access them and make something of themselves
so that they can be productive members of society.

I have no doubt that if we operate along the lines of this paradigm we shall
see the birth of a young generation in whom we can safely entrust the future of
our country.

I speak, comrades, of a new vision for the youth, new not because it
contains anything unknown before but new because it redirects us back to the
path of political consciousness and a recommitment to nation building. Anything
less is nothing but a continuation of a spiral towards national failure in
years ahead of us.

It is often said that the greatest love you can show your country and your
people is to be prepared to die for them. That, indeed, is true but what are
you doing for them while you are still alive. Even as we say we as a country
owe our young people much and that you have a right to be here, let us also
remember the famous words that we must ask not what our country can do for us
but what we can do for our country.

Allow me please to close by saying what I said when we named a stadium after
one of our young heroes, comrade Mogale, namely that there was a time when day
and night were the same for the black person in this country. There was a time
when we feared the day because our enemies could find us. There was a time when
we feared the night because they could catch and kill us without anyone
knowing. Our young people of 1976 and before and afterwards fought to free us
from the fear of the day and the night. Let us serve them by understanding that
we have a right to be here and we shall make our contribution to the
consolidation of freedom and democracy through self development and nation
building.

I thank you all!

Issued by: Office of the Premier, North West Provincial Government
16 June 2007