Hon Chairperson and members, I am frequently asked in public fora to reflect on the state of our nation on what the future holds. Without exception, when addressing young and old I make every effort to encourage everyone to take hold of all that is good in South Africa and to join me in the betterment of our society.
I value these opportunities because they afford me the chance to do something to reflect about where we are heading as a nation and whether I'm comfortable with the direction we are taking. I have had several such occasions recently and the best I can do is to share some of the insights that I have gleaned. We are all aware of the serious social challenges facing our country. I will not elaborate on them here. Yet it is worth noting that the youth of our country suffer the impact of those social challenges more than any other group. Youth unemployment is higher than the national average. Violent crime, we are informed, is almost exclusively committed by young males and substance abuse is most prevalent amongst the youth. Indeed, in the Western Cape, drugs, especially tik, have a vice-like grip on the youth in our community. In Atlantis, the community has been hit by a wave of teen date rape which has been used to fuel Internet pornography.
As distraught as the victims and their families feel, they are more disillusioned with the criminal justice system that seems to offer the perpetrators of crime too much opportunity to escape conviction.
Why is it that so many cases are thrown out of court? Is it because of poor investigation or the lack of will to confront the issues? Surely the heavy case loads and poor working conditions of social workers, police, public prosecutors and magistrates add to the problem of low morale and resulting inefficiency. The focus of the government should be to increase the number of well-qualified appointments in all these disciplines so that we are not seen to be failing society, especially our youth.
In another part of Cape Town, at the University of the Western Cape, I recently met a group of passionate young students who are studying to be teachers, but who can no longer afford their studies because there are no state bursaries available to those who do not major in Maths or Science. History, Afrikaans, Geography, Economics, Accountancy, etc, are overlooked because they are not seen to fall within the national priorities. Many of these students will be forced to give up their studies because of lack of finances. Other young teachers who have qualified and who are committed to serving our country in state schools are forced to look abroad to pay off their enormous student loans.
We need to look at more flexibility within our systems so that we can keep our young people in South Africa. I know of a young Science and Mathematics teacher who came to investigate teaching in South Africa, but had to return to England, disappointed, because he could not afford to live here and meet his commitments because of the poor salaries paid to teachers. Government needs to look at making it practical and affordable for young people to return to the land of their birth and to serve the nation as they would like to do. In a few weeks' time, learners will be enjoying the mid-year holidays, yet many of those learners will not be able to return to school next term and they will be forced to drop out to seek work or to be snapped up by the lure of drugs, gangsterism and a life of crime.
Government needs to sharpen its efforts at curbing crime. Sadly, those who do graduate are met with a job market where there is a dearth of opportunity. Unemployment and poverty are the source of much of what is wrong with our country. We need to look at an economy and a labour market that is less regulated and more encouraging of entrepreneurship. As legislators we must ask ourselves what more must still be done to ensure that the dreams of those youth who took to the streets in 1976 are realised in the free South Africa of 2008.
As politicians we have much to do. It strikes me that above all of these challenges, the youth of South Africa are tired; tired of a brand of politics which bickers and divides instead of offering more solutions. Instead of representing the differences in opinion of our people, political parties have come to be the cause of those differences. In doing so we have alienated our youth and made them become thoroughly disinterested in politics and politicians.
In 1996, our then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki inferred that we are all Africans, that we share a common heritage despite the different course of our histories. How far our nation has fallen from those lofty heights where we now have politics characterised by deep divisions and mutual suspicion! The youth of 2008, just like the youth of 1976, will not accept this status quo. I, for one, look forward to the youth leading a new social uprising, but a nonviolent one.
This time they will begin to demand leadership that begins with people not committees and commissions; leadership that understands that government is supposed to be inclusive and never exclusive and a leadership that is there for all the people.
The youth of 2008 are sending us a message that they are all African, that they love their country and are passionately devoted to its future. The challenge the youth today place at our feet is a challenge that resonates throughout our nation. Let us take up the challenge to work for a common patriotism for all the people of South Africa.