Members of the ANC Youth League can’t claim they didn’t anticipate the reaction they got when they announced their campaign to ban the selling of liquor on Sunday.
Religious groups, particularly Christians who regard Sunday as the day of worship, have welcomed the campaign. Liquor traders and others inclined towards civil liberties have stopped short of accusing the Youth League of being drunk.
I may disagree with its methods, but I share the league’s concerns. But I think that by limiting it to ”no drinking on Sundays” the league is holding back on a far more important message.
I take the league to be saying that social rot is rife among our young people and something has got to give. It cannot be business as usual. Taverns and shebeens, drugs and alcohol, fast cars, crass materialism and loose morals are merely symptomatic of the Armageddon we are turning townships and other poor societies into.
I wish the league would broaden its campaign and encourage young people to take up positive lifestyles.
Like the nouveau riche who seem not to know what to do with their new-found wealth, some among the newly liberated have found freedom too ”liberating” for their sensibilities.
We cannot keep mouthing platitudes every time a promising youngster — such as Gift Leremi — dies of lifestyle-inflicted injuries and then do nothing once the dust at the cemetery has settled. We need a social plan that goes beyond social grants.
It is a good thing the league has a say in the corridors of power. Let us see it use its power profitably in the real and sustained interest of the youth.
I have said it before and I will repeat it: when our children watch programmes like Jika Majika (a dance competition) at 7pm on SABC1 on a Wednesday evening it is detrimental to their development. They should be studying or watching programmes that enlighten them. They can dance all they want over weekends.
Those ”authentic blacks” can accuse me all they like about aspiring to be white for saying so. I am accused of this when our children are trying to outdance each other. Zimbabwean students, on the other hand, take part in a high school quiz where every high school is invited to send their best talents.
Apparently it is part of South African black culture to sing and dance — but to aspire to a better quality of life is to play white.
Maybe that’s why, just a few days after I had registered my misgivings about the timing of Jika Majika, the show hosted eight-year-olds in their school uniforms — accompanied by their teachers. Just last week, while scrolling around during the Africa Cup of Nations, I noticed that one SABC channel aired a matric revision show at midnight.
These are some of the things that I hope the Youth League will tackle with the same fervour it got Jacob Zuma elected as ANC president.
I hope it will use its proximity to power and policy-making to help engineer a new young cadre who has debunked the myth that it is cool to abuse mood-enhancing substances.
I hope the league will spearhead a campaign that asks of young people that they love themselves better and not to listen to voices that tell them that ghetto life is their destiny and only luck and pluck (to commit a crime that has big financial rewards) can rescue them.
Sure, the league will be accused of duplicity because some of its members are known to drink merrily. Songezo Mjongile, who is standing for the presidency of the league, was seen in a photo drinking with Tony Yengeni while the latter was out on weekend parole.
But whether youth leaders drink on Sunday, this should not water down its key message that by abusing intoxicants youth is being wasted on the young.
This does not mean that the leaders of young people have no role-modeling responsibility. We need a champion. Just like Nelson Mandela was a champion of reconciliation, the youth need an epitome of real and sustainable cool that does not depend on using chemical substances.
Social butterflies and other media creatures don’t cut the mustard. We need young people who have achieved real things and enjoyed sustainable success. We need our youngsters to aspire to be awarded the Nelson Mandela-Rhodes scholarship rather than the best-dressed celebrity award; to be Steve Jobs rather than to hope for any job.
For this to happen, corporate South Africa and civil society should, instead of condemning our young people to lost-generation status, create spaces that recognise and reward their efforts.
Like Wynton Marsalis’s song Where Y’all At (from his album From the Plantation to the Penitentiary) says, the freedom fighters, radicals and liberals cannot feign indifference when the struggle for liberty and dignity is drunk away in an orgy of self-destruction.
Aluta continua, we chanted before 1994. The struggle continues today. This time it is for the souls of our youth.
As we did with the other struggle, we should spare no effort or strength to ensure victory.