PEDRO MZILENI | Podcasts capture June 16 significance much better

Mainstream media interviews,  broadcasts  and government rallies were the norm once again in this year’s commemoration of June 16. The subjects of “youth unemployment” and “youth employment opportunities” were the dominant themes branded across the public space.

Although the government slightly shifted its approach to honouring June 16 this year from traditional speech rallies to career expos, one still finds it hard to believe that it actually has a concrete strategy to achieve full employment.

The June 16 edition of 2023 is less than 12 months before the next general elections. Political parties know very well that this upcoming national election has the potential to change a government in power and preliminarily polls are also showing that adults below the age of 35 are going to be the deciding vote.

As a result, political parties are in a fierce competition at this stage to win the minds of this young group. The 50% majority vote of the ANC in the national government is under serious threat and it is currently in a scramble to save the little that is left of its integrity.

For instance, the ANC is on an aggressive PR exercise, unashamedly using government programmes and budgets to try and demonstrate to the public that it can still deliver. The sudden youth jobs offers made every week by Premier Panyaza Lesufi in Gauteng – using both government and ANC party advertising branding to market such opportunities in the process - is clear evidence of how desperate the ANC is running against the 2024 elections calendar to save the little majority it has remaining in Gauteng.

This practice seems to be the norm across the country and young people are fully aware of the deceiving script at play. In the Eastern Cape, the ANC provincial government organised a “Transport Youth Indaba” in Gqeberha on June 13. The Herald newspaper, which covered the event, reported that this was meant to be a government mass rally event for MECs and officials to give speeches but it was only attended by 60 people. Some of the attendees indicated that they had only heard of the event the night before.

Episodes such as this clearly show government’s actual intentions with Youth Month – let’s look busy; let’s tell our unemployed comrades to bring more unemployed youth to our government events to show the media that there’s enthusiasm; let’s show that we, as the current leaders of government, we’re loved by the youth; let’s have something tangible that shows that we do spend our budgets and let’s leave footprints for the 2024 election that show that we did have youth initiatives a few months before the polls.

This thinking dominated the government’s planning regime across all the three spheres led by the ANC. The unemployment crisis is real, it is painful and dehumanising to the young people who have to confront it daily. They take any available opportunity just to have something to survive with at the end of the month. Political parties take advantage of this desperation and turn this desperation into their political commodity to make PR exercises out of .

There are young people who are aware of this, and they refuse the deceit. The poor attendance at all government rallies this year is a clear indication of how tired the youth is of listening to the same non-productive rhetorical speeches. What government officials don’t realise is that young people are having much better conversations about the June 16 uprisings on their podcasts daily.

YouTube Podcasts such as MacG’s “Podcast and Chill” , Dj Sbu’s “The Hustler’s Corner”, Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh’s “Xperience” and Nkululeko Nkewu’s “Nkululeko n Cultr” are all providing credible and critical guests and conversations about the black condition facing the youth in SA with far more depth.

These platforms have tabled concrete reflections, ideas and strategies for youth action on everything concerning education, development, history, independence, racism, feminism, empowerment, innovation, entrepreneurship, career development, hustling, job searching, industrialisaton, critical consciousness, organising, international relations, voting, advocacy, decolonisation and wealth creation.

They share millions of subscribers who receive this type of content daily and they have elevated the awareness of the youth between what is credible and what is nonsense. The traditional mainstream media broadcasts and government rallies that all pretend to be critical, caring and effective will continue being exposed in our modern times of how irrelevant and empty they are to young people of this modern age.

The youth has self-constructed its own platforms and ideas already to better foreground its total liberation. For youth emancipatory ideas and organising, the podcast is the future.