Johannesburg | Sunday
SOUTH Africa celebrated Youth Day on Saturday with President Thabo Mbeki honouring the memory of an apartheid-era youth hero and urging the country’s youth to face new challenges with the same zeal.
Addressing a national Youth Day celebration at the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg’s Soweto township, Mbeki identified the new challenges as poverty, unemployment, racism and the spread of HIV/Aids.
Youth Day commemorates a schoolchildren’s revolt against apartheid education on June 16, 1976, in Soweto.
“As we remember the heroes of 1976, we must ensure that we educate the youth, but if they value their fallen heroes they must participate in the process of transformation,” South African news agency Sapa quoted Mbeki as saying.
The president said he was worried by reports that many young people did not take part in elections and expressed concern over youth involvement in crime and drug abuse.
He challenged youths to continue with the struggle for a non-racial South Africa.
Recent events such as the murder of black teenager Tshepo Matloga by white rugby players — who dumped his body in a crocodile-infested lake — serve as a reminder that racism persists, Mbeki told the crowd. “These incidents showed the divided society that we live in.”
Earlier, he laid a wreath at a memorial erected on the spot where Hector Petersen was shot dead during the black pupils’ revolt against apartheid education, especially the use of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in black schools.
Petersen became the symbol of the uprising that transformed the country. He was the first of 23 pupils to be shot dead on June 16, 1976, by official count — the first of some 200 according to Soweto township counts.
The memorial has become a shrine, attracting visitors pondering the children’s protest and life in South Africa since the advent of all-race democracy in 1994.
The wreath-lying ceremony followed a march — led by Mbeki — from the Morris Isaacson school where the revolt started.
South Africa’s youth agreed that today’s challenges are different, but were still as pronounced as those facing children 25 years ago.
The South African Youth Council, with more than 50 member organisations, the South African Youth Commission and the ruling African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) have cited HIV/Aids, unemployment and racism as the main ones.
“We are the first generation to live in a free society. We still have the challenges of building non-racialism, non-sexism, democracy and a better life for all, but new tasks have emerged,” said Malusi Gigaba, president of the ANCYL — which was a key organisation in the struggle against white minority rule.
“Now we must fight against preventable diseases … like HIV/Aids and poverty linked to the disease,” Gigaba said.
HIV infection is increasing fastest among 15-to-20-year-olds in South Africa, where an estimated 4.7 million people — one in nine — are HIV positive. – AFP