SOMETHING about Statistician-General Pali Lehohla presenting his report on the state of youth in South Africa reminded me of cricketer Kevin Pietersen.
The talented yet controversial cricketer has said he is pondering the possibility of being available for Proteas selection, come 2018.
Lehohla reported this week that “for Indians and whites, the future is very clear. For coloured and black youth, it’s not. It takes twice the effort for a black or coloured child qualified from the same university to be employed”.
Pietersen embodies the lie that employment equity (and economic empowerment) are responsible for the lack of opportunities for whites in general and white males in particular.
We know this is untrue. Instead it is the current situation of black and coloured youth that has made the statistician-general tell us that our country faced “a cocktail of disasters” as a result of the disproportionate number of unemployed black and coloured youngsters.
In simple terms, young whites are more likely to get opportunities to make a better life for themselves now and in the future than their black counterparts.
You would not know or believe this if you believed the clamour of the likes of Pietersen, because he was under the misguided impression that there was no future for white males in South Africa.
Then again, transition periods come with lots of uncertainty. Everyone thinks the other is to blame for their misfortune and only they and their hard work are responsible for the luck.
But whatever one might think about who is to blame, it is essential that all South Africans must rise to face challenges ahead of us and stop being disingenuous about why we are here and who is to blame.
To do that we must be honest about the past and realistic about the present and create reasons hopeful for the future.
That means those who, like Pietersen, pretend there is an anti-white agenda, must start being truthful with themselves and their circles, and accept that opportunities for white men finding jobs are a function of the economic space we are in.
The numbers do not lie.
It is as hard to be black today as it ever was in the history of South Africa.
The Stats chief also told us education was key to this unhappy and unhealthy distribution of opportunities.
To correct this, the state must get serious.
It is one thing to build schools but totally another to educate a population.
This is no time for spin.
We should all be worried when only 38 percent of South Africans under 35 have a matric and only 1 percent of this group has a university degree.
It does not require great wisdom to know why prisons are populated by young black and coloured males.
It helps nobody to have stats of children who nominally complete their high school education but leave with no real skill to empower themselves or the ability to attain a tertiary education at a university or a vocations college.
The numbers are also an indictment of the government that is supposed to be pro-poor. There is no doubt that the world economic downturn has had an adverse effect on South Africa as it has on every other economy.
That must not take away from the policy and administrative decision made by South African decision makers. South Africa must go back to basics and make education empowering in a meaningful way.
Mindsets regarding why government must spend money on youth potential must also change. Only in South Africa can we have a constituency that is dead set against subsidising young people’s education at universities but wholeheartedly supports so-called wage subsidies that are guaranteed to perpetually regenerate families of wage slaves. The state must drop this policy and rather invest in skills that will skill young people rather than give them a dead-end, low-paying job.
Back to our cricket hero, I hope Pietersen does become available to play for the Proteas. If he does, he would inadvertently have made a bigger point about how wrong he and many others are about opportunities in South Africa being reserved for selected groups.
Of course he will be in his late thirties, so then he might end up not being selected. If this happens, it will be because of his age and not his colour. And if he is selected, it would also send a statement that merit, talent and hard work will open doors for you – even if you are a “matured” white male in employment equity-era South Africa.
In the same way that South Africa needs all its Pietersens, Temba Bavuma, Faf du Plessis, Kagiso Rabada, Hashim Amla and even the imported talents of an Imran Tahir to compete in the cricket world, our society cannot afford to neglect the future of all its young people, not especially when they are by far the majority, if it is to compete in every other sphere of life.
@fikelelom