Wonder Hlongwa
While thousands of South African youths are lingering in jails, on street corners or at home, hundreds of others are putting their skills and talents to work to improve the lives of their communities.
“Social responsibility” has become the catchphrase for dozens of grassroots projects started by small groups of youths, many of whom are themselves battling to survive.
These youths have resisted despair and taken the initiative to help those around them. Their efforts offer a stark contrast to the now-common stereotype of a youth “entitlement culture”.
In KwaZulu-Natal, for example, a group of unemployed graduates has joined forces in the African Graduates Initiative. The 600-strong group includes newly qualified lawyers, teachers and other professionals from around the continent who have been unable to find work in South Africa’s tightly squeezed job market.
Since 1996, the initiative has organised groups of similarly qualified members to put their education to use in their respective communities. Teaching graduates are running afternoon classes in their neighbourhoods; law graduates conduct law clinics in the townships in and around Pietermaritzburg; and computer science graduates are running computer workshops for community members and primary school children.
“We do this because we feel it is our social responsibility to plant back what the society gave us,” said Mfundo Mncwabe, the initiative’s acting chair and an unemployed Bachelor of Administration graduate.
The group is currently making arrangements with several schools to run winter courses when schoolchildren start winter holidays.
Mncwabe says the initiative’s members conduct all their activities on a volunteer basis. The group has also offered to help the Independent Electoral Commission with preparations for next year’s general election. Although the graduates would prefer to be paid for this work, they are prepared to do it on a volunteer basis.
But the unemployed graduates say they are disappointed that they have been unable to gain the support of the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa (Tefsa). Mncwabe says the initiative had hoped that the fund would respond to their efforts by not charging members interest on their student loans during the period of their unemployment.
“We took loans for our tertiary education but now we can’t find jobs, so we asked Tefsa to recognise 100 hours of community work as an equivalent to R1 000. Or else they must just stop putting more interest [on the outstanding loans],” said Mncwabe.
Another group which is reaching out to its community with little assistance from the government is the Alexandra Artists Forum.
Started in 1996 by artist Collen Kapa and his colleagues, the forum aims to inspire a new generation of artists in the township. The forum has spent the past two years voluntarily dedicating their weekday afternoons to teaching art to primary school pupils.
Kapa is a struggling professional artist who has exhibited his pottery works in Grahamstown, at Durban’s Bat Centre and other galleries. His colleagues across the hall specialise in music and the fine arts.
Like Mncwabe, Kapa says it is his social responsibility to invest his knowledge in young artists. At 35, Kapa says he still considers himself part of the youth generation, and believes he owes them this contribution.
But Kapa says the forum has also received scant support from the government. The forum has had no feedback about a funding proposal it submitted last year to the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, said Kapa.
The centre set up by the forum two years ago stood virtually empty this week when the Mail & Guardian visited. Broken windows and wind- swept hallways bore testament to the forum’s dire lack of funding.
“As a result [of the broken windows], these children caught flu, and we were in trouble with their parents,” says Kapa, who says the forum had to discontinue classes.
Even before the flu struck, Kapa says the forum had struggled to survive. Arts education requires materials, and sometimes the members use their own money to buy these for the children.
Kapa’s colleague, Hubert Mashaba, specialises in fine art. He also mourns the lack of sponsorship for their project. “We don’t even have transport to deliver our things.”
Mashaba said the forum often depends on a group of white artist friends to bring donated materials with them when they visit the centre.