Apdusa Western Cape held an open discussion on 16 June, Youth Day as part of the commemoration of the heroic youth struggles of the late 1970s. The introduction and discussion raised important issues insofar as the current and future role of South African youth is concerned.

Youth in their millions have systematically been denied access to the resources of the country. This reality has been duplicated with regard to the access to the country’s wealth denied to their parents, elders and the working class and its allies generally. The youth find themselves in a state of near despair, sensing that there is and will be little by way of a meaningful life for them. The levels of drug abuse, poor education, indulgence in destructive social practices like gangsterism, crass materialism and superficial adherence to discredited ideologies are some of the symptoms of this uncertain existence. The scourge of joblessness adds to this dire situation. Those in charge of the country offer entrepreneurship, handouts from the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), pitiful social grants, volunteerism and NGO-ism to the youth. These solutions offered to youth are no solutions. Neither will they in the fullness of time be real solutions. The same goes for the clamour for youth to focus on their formal studies, pass well, get a good job and then proceed to live productive lives. Tens of thousands of graduates walking the street put a lie to this.

In the face of all of these challenges and developments, South African youth have been involved in local struggles around housing, ablution facilities, quality education and access to tertiary education, amongst others. Internationally youth have been in the forefront of struggles for political and social change in Egypt, Turkey, Chile, Brazil as well as in Greece, Spain and Portugal.  However,  a weakness that has been evident in many  of the recent uprisings  has been the predominance of NGOs in the leadership.  

In all of these struggles one fact emerges strongly: that in order to secure their future, youth will have to embrace an alternative political narrative; an alternative to the bourgeois narrative which praises individualism, political “dumbing down” of youth and a continuation of the bourgeois- capitalist system which entrenches  youth social regression. This alternative is to consider and embrace the struggle for socialist-democracy – here in South Africa and elsewhere. In so doing the proud legacy of the heroic 1976 youth struggles can be preserved for future generations.