Chairperson, I thank you for an interesting though brief debate. It is important to emphasise that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is available to all students in the universities of our country.
We must, of course, raise concerns about the rising fees of our tertiary education institutions. Our tertiary education is becoming inaccessible to the poor and working class; tuition fees continue to rise. If we don't deal with this matter, the circle of poverty may not be broken because it is only the children of those who can afford it who will then gain access to higher education, and the children of the poor and working class will remain in learnerships and the National Youth Service Programme only. It is therefore important that this matter should be raised continually so as to succeed in appealling to the conscience of our universities and their councils to ensure that higher education becomes accessible to the majority of our youth. We have to do that because we need to keep as many young people within the education system as possible.
At present, out of all the young people who graduate from Grade 12 every year, only about 10% will gain access to the universities. What happens to the rest, because there is not enough employment? So most of our youth would then be thrown into the growing pool of the unemployed.
There is a need to address youth unemployment because you cannot have, in such a society such as ours, large numbers of latent energy idling unused, because if it's not used, it will express itself in other ways, including in particular in socially deviant ways such as crime and alcoholism. I also want to say that there is nothing unique in South Africa about youth participation in politics.
Globalisation internationally creates these conditions where young people increasingly disengage; their consciousness declines. Their civic, political and social consciousness declines and politics becomes a spectator sport. As we correctly say, there has never been a decade in South Africa in which the youth did not play a role in the struggle. The question is, now that the struggle has been won, what is it that we are supposed to do? What are political organisations doing to mobilise the youth to deepen their political and social activism, to raise the level of their political, social and civic consciousness as well as their responsibility? What are we doing to raise the level of leadership and the all-round competencies of the youth?
It doesn't help to stand on podiums and complain when you see that all over our country there isn't sufficient investment in youth organisations and their autonomous existence. The autonomous existence of youth organisations affords the youth the opportunity to make mistakes and, indeed, young people have to make mistakes; that's the only way to learn. The older generations, instead of standing above the youth judging them and reminding them about what a good breed they were in the past, need instead to engage young people to help them to correct the mistakes that they may be committing.
Take for example the fact that in South Africa we've got preventable diseases such as cholera, including HIV; they are all preventable. We have thousands of youth at universities, what do they do? How are we engaging these young people in the Eastern Cape, in Delmas in Mpumalanga, to educate those communities about the usage of water, about hygiene, about healthy lifestyles?
As political organisations, we have a responsibility not to join the chorus of those who lament declining consciousness and activism but to do something instead to build strong youth movements that are able to intervene when our people are facing acute challenges as they are at present. Similarly, it is good to criticise, but it is better to suggest what can be done to correct what you think is a mistake.
Youth development in our country has not received the level of attention it requires, especially from the private sector which possesses the largest volumes of capital to be able to intervene in the socioeconomic conditions of the youth, as well as civil society in general, including government departments. Many try but there are many that can still do better.
We have the National Youth Service Programme, but if we dedicated more resources than we have done so far, we would be in a much better condition to intervene in the situation of the youth to give them hope, to inspire them to strive for new uprisings in the fields of education, health, science and technology and social life in our country.
We must view youth development and youth mobilisation as two sides of the same coin and adhere to the principle or to the slogan "Youth mobilisation for youth development and youth development for youth mobilisation", because these two things are inseparable from one another. We have to encourage our youth to seize the opportunities of democracy.
It is incorrect to argue that there is a dearth of opportunity in our society. An amount of R562 billion is spent in the Budget, of which 60% is for social services in this financial year; this Budget has been growing. We have to find ways to use this budget; not in the usual old ways of doing things but to intervene in the situation of the youth. Because if we don't, we must bear in mind that youth unemployment constitutes 70% of all unemployment in the country and that these unemployed youth don't have skills either.
If we don't intervene in that, we will have great difficulty in addressing the challenges of building South Africa into the future, of inspiring the youth, of instilling hope in them so that they are able to carry the hopes of our nation and raise the level of our nation's struggles and pursuits to higher levels.
It is important that we continue to engage young people in these debates and, above all else, to be winners ourselves so that we are able better to support the youth. Thank you very much.
Debate concluded.