TESSA DOOMS | Youth plan to use June 16 gathering to show their relevance to issues today

It was in the 1930s when author and activist Pearl S Buck first said, “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it, generation after generation.” In SA we often associate audacious youth who dare to imagine and achieve the impossible with the youth of 1976, who we memorialise every June for their brave contribution to the Struggle for democracy at a time that political leaders were jailed and adult activists demoralised.

As important as the youth of 1976 are, they are not the only young people who have dared to lead this society to something better. It was a young Steven Bantu Biko who used the power of his pen and voice to reawaken the consciousness of students through championing black consciousness as a core site of emancipatory Struggle.

A young Mark Heywood redirected his activism to HIV/Aids as early as 1994, spearheading a decade of struggle for health equity that led to the formation of the Treatment Action Campaign. It was a young Shaeera Kalla who led a small group of 50 students at Wits to the lobby of the vice-chancellor’s office in 2015, which culminated in a moment of unprecedented solidarity among university protest movements under the banner of #FeesMustFall.

All these people in their youth remind us that when we #LetYouthLead we do not do them any favours. We in fact afford our society opportunities for seismic shifts in political ideas, cultural norms and developmental outcomes. Young people are the torch bearers of every era in history.

They shine light on the dark corners the previous generations cannot not see and have the courage to challenge the status quo into and through discomfort. Often unincumbered by the burdens of bureaucratic adulthood, young people are burdened with purpose, passion and a refusal to accept their fates. Often held back only by the perceptions of older generations believing them too inexperienced or irrational to take on the tasks of leadership.

One of the charges that older generations of South Africans often accuse young people of today, is apathy. Particularly, political apathy. Mass retreat from voting and a lack of trust in political party structures has grown what I argue is a false narrative that young people in SA do not care about the country or its future.

Having worked as a youth development activist and advocate for over 20 years, I wish to dispel that myth. In the many years of working in a wide range of communities, with young people with various levels of opportunity, education and information, I have become convinced that young people do not lack interest, they lack mobilising power to turn local organising into mass action. As we enter Youth Month, this deficient in mobilisation is being filled by the National Youth Coalition (NYC).

Born out of a bringing together of young people through an intersection between the work of a multistakeholder youth parade convened by the Ahmed Kathrada Youth Clubs and the Kagiso Trust’s Civil Society Unmuted forum, the National Youth Coalition, young people representing 70 youth organisations from across SA, gathered in February to formalise the NYC into a youth-led civil society movement determined to build a coherent vision for a just and equitable future and making commitments to develop mass action together.

Their commitments to action include a focus on strengthening civic and political education, continued development of community action campaigns in areas including decent work, quality education, health, gender justice, climate justice, governance and arts and culture. A truly audacious plan to register a minimum of 1.7-million youth to vote in the 2024 election has also been undertaken by this collective.

The first toward this and their other commitments to promote civic and voter education is a mass meeting of young people in Tshwane on June 16. Thousands of young people have registered to attend the “Shake the Capital” youth parade. This event begins as a march from the centre of the Tshwane CBD to the Union Buildings.

However, what is exciting about this march is that instead of culminating in the handover of a memorandum to the government, they will host a festival of ideas. This includes civic and political education workshops, film screenings, arts events, sports activations and voter registration.

Young people will not only be seen but will also be heard. Heard calling for a new era of activism that brings the majority of the communities and people of this country literally to the centre of governance. Instead of June being a month where older generations critique the youth for apathy, the NYC provides an opportunity to support and empower youth mobilisation for change.

I borrow and slightly amend the call to action by Thomas Sankara to commend the efforts to mobilise for change by the young people of SA. For having the courage to stand up and be counted even when so many have overlooked and underestimated you.

I remind you that no fundamental change happens without people who are willing to attempt the impossible. Have the courage to “turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future”. Because you truly are not the children of SA but the parents the country's future generations deserve.