Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young. Instead of putting their young and healthy backs into fruitful labour, that is left to cranky old people with lumbago and Prozac-addled brains. It is a shame, really. After a lifetime of stuffing up the economy and their social relations, the blue-rinse brigades have earned the right to enjoy their decrepitude by going fishing. Instead, they are now expected to get off their cellulite-dimpled backsides and think of a solution to SA’s youth crisis — and be quick about it.
It is hardly necessary to elaborate on the youth crisis.
Of the country’s estimated 20-million people aged between 15 and 24, approximately 7-million are Neets — young people not in employment, education or training — a sanitised description invented in the mother of nanny states, the UK, for people on the threshold of a life of crime or begging or both.
As things are with the economy, helped along by the perennial trouble at Eskom, old folks may wonder what the point of crime or begging might be when there is nothing left to redistribute. Best not to dwell. Think instead.
One thought is that old folks, the so-called beneficiaries of apartheid and ANC largesse, cannot be trusted for a solution. Perhaps they should hand over the keys to some snotty kid and repair to Xanadu forthwith. If you have such a palace, that is. The rest of the older generation will have to account for the blunders of their peers.
As things are with the economy, helped along by the perennial trouble at Eskom, old folks may wonder what the point of crime or begging might be when there is nothing left to redistribute. Best not to dwell. Think instead.
But right there is the thing. Beyond the gratification of retribution, it matters little who or what is to blame for the youth crisis. What matters is what should be done, and the responsibility for doing it falls to those with the ability to respond. Those who are to blame for the mess are arguably the least able to fix it.
This argument rules out the beneficiaries of apartheid and of ANC largesse. It also rules out anyone who feels entitled to employment and equality, because such an expectation eliminates ability. By default, therefore, the greater weight of responsibility falls on those young people who are prepared to take responsibility for their own welfare.
Expressed differently, and on the understanding that social maturity is characterised by the willingness and capacity to take responsibility for one’s own life, only grown-ups qualify to receive the keys to the economy. It means people who identify as youths will remain that until they are willing and able to change into adults.
No one can do that for them, and the unpalatable fact is that their efforts to join the ranks of the adults will be adjudicated by the very adults who stand accused of creating the youth crisis. In this way, cognitive dissonance is just like karma. Suck it up. Life is hard.
Older people can help though. In his classic work, Les Rites de Passage, the French folklorist Arnold van Gennep (1873—1957) describes the process of change as a ritual. It can be reduced to three simple steps: stop what you’re doing (leave your mother’s house), learn something (anything) and apply the learning (best done in your own community).
That is for openers. The next lesson is not to repeat the mistakes of the elders — racist policies and Stalinism, for instance. More importantly, perhaps, entertain the idea that the nation has been asking the wrong questions all this time. The Neet acronym encapsulates what is held to be the problem as joblessness and a lack of education and training.
It is none of those. What is needed is the wherewithal to live. Skills might help generate the means, but not jobs, and jobs do not necessarily generate enough wealth to live. Ask SA’s millions of working poor.
Inequality is not the problem either. The quickest way to become equal is by becoming equally poor. Ask any leftie.
The bitter pill is that no one can fix anyone else’s problems for them. If SA has a youth crisis, it is the youth’s problem to fix. Good luck with that, young people.
• Blom is a flyfisher who likes to write.
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