Ndza khensa, Mufambisi wa Ntirho. [Thank you, Chairperson.]
Hon members, fellow South Africans, I stand before you this afternoon as a proud South African who is committed to building this country and to ensuring that everyone has access to opportunities to better the quality of his or her life. I stand before you as a beneficiary of the efforts and heroism shown by the 1976 generation of young men and women.
Hon members, as we celebrate and commemorate Youth Month, we can all agree that the freedom we enjoy today is due to a significant degree to the efforts of the youth of 1976. We are harvesting the inheritance left behind by that generation of fearless young men and women.
Our duty today is to build on that inheritance and leave for future generations an even richer and brighter endowment. However, we cannot get there if we cannot ask and honestly respond to the question whether our individual and collective actions as leaders bring hope and inspiration to millions of young people in our land.
I know a lot has been done, yet so much more still needs to be done, done better and with more honesty. Last week, I read a report about primary school learners having to pay R2 to cross a makeshift bridge in the East Rand to get to school. This is 20 years into our democracy. We regularly read similar stories.
I can relate to the struggles of those learners from the East Rand. I used to walk 6km from Lefara to Mhlaba village on a daily basis, having to cross a river that had no bridge. As this was in the early 90s, it can perhaps be forgiven. But we cannot forgive our young people having to endure such difficulties in 2014, 20 years after the dawn of our democracy. [Applause.]
We have to ask what inheritance we are leaving behind for these learners, when we cannot give them the simplest instruments to make something of their lives when they are older. What do we expect them to think when they read about the billions of rands that are wasted and stolen each year when they don't have a proper bridge so that they can get to school safely? Will they be wrong to think that their inheritance is being stolen by leaders who are supposed to protect and nurture their future?
Hon members, we can't claim to be serious about improving the lives of our young people without improving the quality of their education and their access to it. Our education system must be geared towards equipping our learners to act and think independently so that they can be the architects of their own exit from their current difficult conditions.
We have to make available to them every possible resource so that they can successfully compete with the youth of other nations of the world when it comes to scientific and industrial innovations. This means a fundamental shift in the purpose of our education system - from preparing people for the labour market to producing scientists, businesspeople and industrialists.
That we have many young people with potential there is no doubt. There are many bright young people who are coming up with many innovative products, but they are not being showcased. For example, we have Ludwick Marishane, a young man from Limpopo, who developed a waterless bath solution and won the entrepreneur award in 2011. We have many such Ludwicks in South Africa, but we need to produce many more and provide better support for their development.
If we are to address the youth unemployment crisis that we face as a country, we have to encourage, support and celebrate innovations by our young people so that we can industrialise the products they develop.
As we discharge our responsibilities as members of this House, as leaders, we must at all times be guided by the desire to ensure that the sacrifice of the 1976 generation, some of whom are in this Chamber, is not in vain. The best way to do that is to do all we can to help our young people realise their dreams so that they can also receive their part of this rich inheritance.
A hi tirheni hi ku tshembeka hi mikarhi hinkwayo tanihi varhangeri va Afrika-Dzonga. Vantshwa i vumundzuku bya tiko rerhu. Ndza khensa. [Va phokotela.] (Translation of Xitsonga paragraph follows.)
[Let us always work honestly as leaders of South Africa. Youth is the future of our country. I thank you.] [Applause.]]