Freedom is responsibility, but how many of our youth realise this? Yalo's award-winning June 16 cartoon was trying to convey this message. Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe made our liberation a reality, but it's our duty to preserve it.

Freedom is responsibility, but how many of our youth realise this? Yalo's award-winning June 16 cartoon was trying to convey this message. Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe made our liberation a reality, but it's our duty to preserve it.

Every youth in the townships should ask the question: What am I doing to make South Africa shine? The time of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, is gone. Now the youth must stand up and be counted.

It is our collective responsibility to protect our freedom by actively participating in the economy. It is time to stop being employees and to be employers. This requires skills and a change of mindset. Black people may be in government, but we are not in control.

We must be skilled in medicine, finance, information technology and security. The black child will not acquire these skills at taverns and shebeens. The black child's future is in the classroom. Every black child must pass matric with an exemption. This will allow them to study engineering, science, finance and medicine, which are all crucial for running the economy.

If South Africa is to be a success, black youth must be in the vanguard of the new struggle. Black youngsters must be at universities, not prisons and cemeteries, Youth must prove Yalo wrong and make South Africa a better place for us all.

Lucas Ntyintyane, Randburg