Hundreds of young people marched to the Union Buildings on 16 June 2013. (Ihsaan Haffejee/GroundUp)
South Africa’s National Youth Coalition has accused President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of not paying heed to its demands that it address problems faced by young people, such as unemployment and limited access to quality education.
The coalition’s interim chairperson, Moeketsi Koahela, said the presidency has failed for two consecutive years to respond to the demands of the coalition, which was formed in 2022 to promote the development of ethical and transformative young leaders.
Since its formation, the coalition has led an annual march to the Union Buildings on Youth Day — 16 June — to highlight the plight of young people.
“It is a significant day to us; the youth is often forgotten and by us coming in our numbers to the Union Buildings yearly it shows that we will not allow our voices to get muffled and overlooked,” Koahela said.
He said the memorandums of demand delivered to the Union Buildings in 2022 and 2023 had yet to yield a response from the presidency, even though a representative from the office had been present at both marches to receive them.
The memos expressed young people’s “deep sense of frustration due to the government’s disregard for our opinions and concerns and we strongly insist on being treated respectfully and having our issues prioritised accordingly”.
The coalition is also demanding that student debt for unemployed graduates who live below the poverty income threshold be cancelled with immediate effect through a bailout by the state working with the private sector.
Given the high rate of unemployment, which affects the youth the most, the coalition also wants the government to implement a monthly universal basic income of R840 to R1 268 for all jobless people aged 18 to 59.
According to Statistics South Africa’s quarterly labour force survey, in the first quarter of 2024 unemployment was at 45.5% among those aged 15 to 34 years old.
In addition to helping create jobs, the coalition wants the government to invest in and support community ownership of renewable energy sources.
It has criticised the government for not allocating a budget to ensure that menstrual health products are free in all schools and public spaces.
While the coalition will not march to the Union buildings on 16 June this year, the coalition has given the government until 16 June 2026 to fulfil its demands.
This year marks 48 years since the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976. On that day, thousands of pupils from the township marched in protest against the introduction by the apartheid government of Afrikaans as a compulsory medium of instruction in schools.
The students were met with brute force from the police and many were shot and killed.
Talking to the Mail & Guardian this week about the significance of Youth Day, some young people said the spirit of activism had been somewhat lost since the advent of democracy in 1994.
“We as the youth kind of have it easy now and we are not so invested in the politics of this country because we feel that what our parents and grandparents went through during apartheid, can’t obviously be repeated,” said a 19-year-old student at Boston Media House, who declined to be named.
“We clearly don’t have the same motivation from freedom fighters during apartheid but we do have different obstacles like high unemployment and climate change that we have to defeat — it is not the same but with time the challenges of the youth have evolved,” weighed in a 27-year-old man from Pretoria.