Those who do not qualify for university are not given career advice or funding, says Narissa Ramdhani.
Pretoria - As Youth Month and Mandela Month have come to an end and we mark Women’s Month and prepare for Heritage month in September, we must ask why we have these landmarks in our calendars?
Are they merely days off work – for those who are employed – or does our government put any real effort behind the philosophy of these celebrations?
South Africa is blessed with many of these single-day landmarks, pushed into our calendars to raise expectations that programmes will be launched, and youth will remain the focus of our media. But will our youth truly believe that government action is taking place countrywide to ensure development programmes, youth assistance, education at secondary and tertiary level are in place to bring hope and gainful study or employment to a massive number of young people who cannot get jobs.
Of the approximately 25 percent unemployed in South Africa, the vast majority are young men and women between the ages of 15 and 35.
“On skills development, of the 1 million young people who exit the schooling system annually, 65 percent exit without achieving a Grade 12 certificate. Less than 4.3 percent of persons aged 18 to 29 were enrolled at a higher education institution in the country. Large numbers of youth, who possess no professional or technical skills, and who exited the education system prematurely, are effectively unemployable,” Deputy Minister in the Presidency Buti Manamela told the National Youth Policy 2020 Consultative Conference on
March 29.
The question is, has our government failed our youth?
As the honorary consul-general for the Republic of Chile in South Africa and chief executive of a South African development organisation that focuses on developing young entrepreneurs, I can only relate to our own situation.
The Republic of Chile has aggressively thrown its weight behind youth empowerment by locating youth initiatives in the presidency, thus enjoying remarkable successes in bringing youth into the mainstream economy. While our development programmes in rural South Africa bring quality and business training to groups of women and youth in business endeavours, where does the money come from? Government?
Or private and public individuals and companies who believe that South Africa’s youth can play a role in our economy and move our communities into the First World economy?
I think you know the answer.
Our government has communicated to its citizens that university degrees hold the key to productive futures. Not only are our universities turning away thousands of bright young minds due to lack of space, but they offer no alternatives. The FET colleges have been absorbed into many of the universities – the technikons, the trade schools – but who will fix our leaking pipes, build new roads, wire new buildings, and even fix broken cars, buses and bicycles?
The thousands of youth who do not qualify for a university entrance are not given career advice. There are no career centres, no formal public/private partnerships, no funding.
We have seen the SETAs fail, some worse than others. Young people want to work; they are hungry for upskilling initiatives and eager to acquire new skills – anything they have a passion for that will support their families and remove them as a drain on our economy.
But where do they go?
At tertiary level, our youth should be streamed into university material or introduced to the wide variety of skilled jobs that can make them proud, self-sustaining citizens. But lowering the NSC pass rate and delivery of a second-class education is not the answer to producing good results every December. This is not about numbers, this is about people, young people with at least 40 to 50 years ahead of them during which they can earn an honest living and take their place in our economy.
This is a job for our teachers. There’s no shame in making a living by using your head and hands. Being a mechanic is just as important a job as a physicist.
We need to emphasise, as they do in the US, that there is dignity in labour.
While many see South Africa’s youth as a ticking time bomb, we see them as future leadership whose creative energies need to be unleashed and nurtured.
Our development programmes have done just that.
By focusing on rural areas where little hope of a full-time job is a certainty, we have created youth entrepreneurs who have demonstrated their creativity by developing successful business solutions for the sustainability of their communities and for themselves, with the result that they are now engaging in national and global business initiatives.
Recently, many of them addressed chairmen and chief executives of 54 FTSE 100 companies at the Lord Mayor’s residence in London. Not only do we upskill and improve the quality of their work, but we give them the business training and incubation necessary for them to understand the benefits of economies of scale, community co-operation, business negotiation, retailing, business management and operations.
Even areas like crafting and visual arts play a major role in promoting the perception of South Africa as an exciting tourist destination. Government should therefore play a vital role in our artistic heritage by helping emerging artists and promoting development of skilled youth.
From an early age, our youth need career advice and guidance. They need to learn and accept that there’s no shame in not going to university.
According to the National Youth Development Agency “about 60 percent of unemployed youth aged below 35 have never worked. Without a targeted intervention, they will remain on the fringes of society”.
The National Youth Plan 2020 is in place to prevent these figures from rising. We look forward to reading how government is going to succeed this time.
In the meantime, we’ll get on with creating our own brand of youth entrepreneurs, while espousing our belief that they are key resources for economic growth and hoping that our numbers – who are real people – will rise beyond our expectations.
* Ramdhani is honorary consulgeneral for the Republic of Chile and chief executive: Ifa Lethu Foundation of South Africa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Pretoria News