South Africa’s youth face mounting social and economic difficulties today. They are the victims of mass unemployment, widespread violence and other societal evils, like drug abuse. Our society increasingly reserves education for a better future to a priviledged minority, as the #FeesMustFall activists learned. While some youths parttake in mass action to advance their prospects in life, many have fallen to victim political apathy. Yet, divorcing themselves from progressive political participation is not a solution to problems confronting our youth. In fact, this trend is totally opposite to the 1970s through to the 1990s when youth were at the forefront of struggles against oppression and exploitation. How did this reversal happen?

 WHAT WENT WRONG ?

All organisations of the people were demobilised during the political negotiations and elite compromises that led to the 1994 elections. The ANC alliance partners then took sole responsibility of the leadership of the youth claiming to be the “leaders” of the democratic revolution, whilst the people became mere spectators. This was followed by populist rethoric of the parties in parliament, to garner votes for themselves while they knew that they could not change the system from within the bourgeois paradigm and the capitalist system.

A bloated state apparatus was established, with all the perks for government bureaucrats, without considering the plight of the youth and unemployed workers. A corrupt government, public and private sectors exacerbate these problems and deny the people a better life for all. The so-called service delivery vacuum that was rapidly developing, was filled by NGOs and new populist organisations which erode the development of a genuine class consciousness.

 HOW DID THE YOUTH RESPOND TO THIS?

We thus find a new form of activism that has evolved under the slogan of a leadership from below or “no politics within our movements”. The student activities that has emerged is the so-called decolonisation movement and the fallist movement. Sectors of the student community have even been barred from participating in the protest  actions. Language has become another contentious issue, that has led to the polarisation of sections of the student movement. The demands that should have united students have become a divisive tool in the hands of some student activists. Anarchism has  become the expression of these “student leaders” without realising that their legitimate demands are being destroyed by such actions. We are thus witnessing the fizzling out of the protest movement of students and the youth.

All of us need to revisit the previous struggles of our forebears. The importance of programmatic struggle cannot be emphasised enough. Ad hoc struggles cannot take our struggle for liberation forward. In fact, ad hoc struggles are reformist in nature, not that we say that reformist struggles are not necessary at some stages, but they are not ends in themselves.  Reformism by its very nature will take place on a regular basis as society evolves. We are saying that our struggle should be informed by the need to destroy the exploitative system, which is capitalism. This can only be done through programmatic struggle and learning from previous engagements. This will enable us to fight ideas with ideas.