when youth was still ‘youth’

Editorial By Mashilo Mnisi

June 14, 2006: Militant youth of 1976 – or should we say “class of ‘76”, is very different in operation from the youth of today in many ways in South Africa. As the Youth month – June, draws to the end much is construed about the youth today that they still need to be conscientized as far as politics go.

Today’s youth is forlorn and faced with oblivion, and apparently politics are passé to this group as opposed to thirty years ago.

Despite that youth commissions have been established solely to serve the young people in this country, they’re daily battling with many indictments such as unemployment, animosities and crimes among themselves. These at least deal them a great blow, and leave these young people with frustrations and disillusioned.

Unlike today’s youth, the 1976 class understood inequalities in the first instance and instantly put a bastion against that, especially when the apartheid regime wanted to introduce Afrikaans as the medium of instructions in the township schools.

Today the country, and in fact the African continent is reeling from tortures, humiliations and killings of homosexuals where youth is most affected but there’s no active and direct interdiction from the youth’s side.

The fight for homosexual rights today could be similar to the one fought for inequalities and oppression during apartheid by the youth of 1976. And therefore it could start in schools like that of Isaac Morrison High School in Soweto as there is still some discrimination against homosexual kids in schools.