Carlton Centre in downtown Johannesburg is flooded by hundreds of young people during weekends.
They file around the circular ring at the entrance on the first floor where they peer admiringly at displays of shiny new BMWs two floors below.
Others mill around the corridors, visiting shop windows and restaurants. The scene is repeated in other shopping malls.
As the 22nd anniversary of June 16 approaches, a new and different attitude is apparent among the youth of today. No longer the “lost generation” of politicised youth which dominated the landscape in the 1970s and 1980s, today’s youth is searching for a brighter, and wealthier, future than their predecessors ever imagined.
“I want to succeed; complete my degree in record time, get a job, buy a house and a car and get on with my life. I don’t care about what everyone says. They will toyi-toyi around the campus, but I will go to the library. Life is not waiting for me. I am here to study,” says University of the Witwatersrand engineering student Dan Khumalo.
He adds that he has “never bothered” to join any student society on the campus and does not aim to do so in the future.
“I am here to study. What else?” he asks. “Do you think that I am not envious when I open a newspaper and see the `People on the move’ section?”
Youth activists attribute Khumalo’s attitude to the growing decline in job security. “The curriculum does not appreciate other aspects of human development.
“There is a perception that participating in campus or other youth activities is anti- academic development. In the end, you achieve academic development at the expense of general human development,” says youth activist Takalani Nwendamutswu.
Nwendamutswu says the uncertainty of finding a job when young people leave school drives many into personal pursuits and makes them apathetic to broader social commitments.
“I don’t think that we demand of young people [today] to throw stones like we did. We are simply asking of them to take up the struggle for transforming South Africa under new conditions,” he says.
Nwendamutswu warns that youth apathy may continue if there is no policy on young people. “That is why we need to see a vibrant National Youth Commission,” he adds.
“We must be very careful not to confuse things when we talk about the depoliticisation of the youth. Politicisation is taking place – whether we are aware of it or not, whether we like it or not.
“After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the right intensified its anti-communism agenda. That agenda continues up to today and young people are the target.”
The urban/rural divide has also contributed to the slackening of interest among the youth in social issues. Information often reaches rural areas late and people have to travel far to regional offices.
Some young people – especially in rural and urban working class communities – find they cannot afford to take time off for activities outside academic programmes because they have to take care of younger family members after school.
Seipati Mathabe, from Diepkloof, is a student at a Braamfontein college. She works at Gold Reef City during weekends and helps to send her younger brother and sister to school.
“I cannot afford to spend most of my time doing things which won’t benefit me. I am helping raise my brother and sister. If I was born in a rich family, I would probably spend most of my free time in malls,” she says. “I am not necessarily indifferent to social matters. It is just that I don’t have the time. These things take time.
“My brother is also growing up. In three years’ time there won’t be time for watching TV all day long. He too will have to work.”