WE ARE born into a world that tells us we are free. A world in which we are free to live as individuals and free to fully-orchestrate and shape the direction of our own lives. No one mentions, or perhaps, no one chooses to mention that we all live a façade and that the world has in fact lied to us all.

The very world that promised us the revolutionary term "freedom", is the world that has deceived you, me, everyone and in turn, itself because, today, my freedom is the very thing that imprisons me.

I'd like to consider myself as. a "convict". Yes, a convict! Not because I've committed a crime and gone to jail to serve a sentence, but, purely because. I AM! So, under the boundaries of this obscure crime, I do swear to speak the truth; the whole truth, and nothing, but the truth... So, help me God!

The world we live in has evolved from the primitive to the advanced First World context of living, with the highly scientific, built-up and developed environment which can be said to encapsulate us.

Well, samples of bacteria in a petri-dish, so to speak. A petri-dish soaked in a "solution-concentrate" of materialism-oxide and catalysed by ignorance-peroxide. So ultimately, what have we become? Merely a species of humans trapped in a highly developed yet spiritually impoverished 21st century world?

This very freedom that we were promised is in fact the freedom that is taken away from us through the institutionalised and monotonous society that we are thrown into, from the moment we attend pre-school, where we are taught to colour inside the big black lines.

Should we not? "Well, that's a rather unattractive picture there. Let's call it Sample A. Suppose, you made a mistake?" Now this tells my fragile child's mind that conformity rules - OK!? - and that conforming to rules and regulations will craft my ultimate success. But will it really? This is the mentality that is ingrained in our minds.

This is the mentality that has shaped and will continue to shape our world and the very mentality that challenges the concept of freedom.

I am one of the generation of Mandela's children and it is because of him and all the other struggle heroes that I was born free. Yet somehow this freedom escapes me. I want it. I yearn for it. Yet, somehow, it seems elusive because although we have so called political freedom - freedom of the soul, freedom of the individual and freedom from the pressure to be someone you're not - is not an option.

The world and society restricts me. It does not honour who I am. It does not respect my individuality and continues to believe that women and children are inferior and that they can be exploited. Human trafficking has replaced slavery - so to what extent am I truly free?

Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher, once said: "We are born free, yet are everywhere in chains". The reality still applies two hundred years later and isn't our stagnant education system the blatant evidence? The abysmal matric pass rate underscores our lack of freedom!

The education system that was meant to be the "Red Bull that gives us wings" in fact shoots us down through its lack of nous, its ineptitude and lazy, slothful scarcity of ideas and application.

Perhaps the saying: "Education is the key," once applied, for some, in the past - I think - but for so many young people, they still wonder where is this key. Perhaps it is notions such as this which motivated philosophers Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre into stating that life can be meaningless.

I am a young South African who has just joined thousands, if not millions, of fellow human beings who have been transported from our various troubles by something known as the beautiful game.

I believe that it is possible for the young people of our country to escape from our chains - to escape from despondency and poverty.

Our successful hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup restores our hope. This is why I believe that it's now time to engender a new struggle - a struggle for the individual, a struggle for young people under a different kind of oppression - the oppression of conformity, mindless direction and lost dreams.

We must learn to think, to be sensitive to the needs of others and to understand the world. Someone once said: "You cannot build the future for the youth but you can build the youth for the future." That is the new struggle, the now struggle, my struggle and - our struggle.

lThe author, Mati Ndhlovu of the Eastern Cape, is the 2010 winner of the 17th yearly Anglo American and Sowetan Young Communicators Awards. This is her winning speech, which was titled Chained Freedom. The runners-up were Siyabulela Ramba of the Western Cape and Engel Ngobe of Mpumalanga.