So 31 years after the Youth Uprisings, the parents of today’s young generation are up in arms saying that what they had to endure in their prime in order to secure for us a better future is not being fully appreciated by us in fact to them our deeds are a kick in the teeth of their efforts.
One of the most influenced writers of the anti-colonial struggle Frantz Fanon once said “Every generation has to find a struggle for themselves and either fulfill it or abandon it”. I think the words of Fanon have timeless relevance especially in a time where everyone who was born before 1970 feels like they have a right to take a swipe at us and crucify us because we are not well mannered anymore and we are the perfect fit to the phrase ‘lost generation’.
The chastisement we are receiving from the so called ‘Class of ‘76’ should not entirely be directed at us,
because the majority of obstacles we continually face were inherited from our preceding generation, so that means if we as today’s youth are the ‘lost’ ones it is probably because we have been following the footsteps of an equally ‘lost’ earlier people.
The majority of the older people who are leading the crusade to reclaim the ‘lost’ young Afrikan mind have hardly stopped and looked at the issue from our perspective, if they have then it means our perspective are not of any importance to them because if they have truly given our perspective an opportunity to articulate itself in this issue they would note that the comparisons of generations should be contextualized and they must not use the number of young people who died for certain reason as a yardstick that determines the ‘heroics’ or ‘lost ness’ of that people.
When I say the comparisons should be contextualized I mean that we should look at the forces which influenced the two generations to react differently to their struggles, during the 1960s and 1970s the political climate was not favorable to the country because of the economic and sporting sanctions which were placed on us, the apartheid government had been caught with its pants down in Angola while they were assisting the Americans in their anti Communist quest, the ANC and PAC were banned, the lion’s share of Afrika was gaining independence while the South remained militant about the well being of the status quo and Bantu education was not pregnant with economy influencing careers for young Afrikans to pursue. All these frustrations reached boiling point in 1976 and so they rebelled against the State.
Today’s political, social and economic climate is more liberal, we have a constitution that boasts no favour based on race, gender and sexual orientation. Unfortunately for the most of young Afrikans of today the information that was given to us regarding our rights was not sufficiently equated with the fact that responsibility accompanies those rights that we quickly take refuge under when it suits us best.
"The parents are quick to criticize us saying we are more American than African because of what we see on television and the music we listen to."
They act like they never went crazy when John Travolta appeared in Grease and Saturday Night Fever, when Teddy Pendergrass said ”Turn off the lights”, when John Coltrane was on a Love Supreme, when John Lennon was Imagining. Yet they are the ones who are critical of the American popular culture, if the older generation is really disgusted by the velocity of our degeneration as a result of foreign cultural imperialism why don’t they take it up with their generational peers who are now in government and let’s see if something different will manifest.
The undeniable truth is that we live in a totally different time to our parents it’s ‘global village’ they call it. Where everything productive and destructive is easily accessible at a press of a button whether it’s mobile phone, computer and television. The life expectancy continues to drop because of illnesses especially HIV and AIDS at the same time we are trying to shake the legacies of apartheid during our lifetime, unemployment is vigorously prevalent on the African people which spills over to poverty and ultimately makes it conducive for crimes and malicious deeds to find a haven in our society where infants are born paraplegic because their mothers were shot on the womb during robberies.
The continued widening gap between the haves and have-nots keeps savage deeds afloat because the perpetrators of these crimes claim that hunger is the reason they act such an inhumane fashion.
"The reality is that hunger staves the mind of any rationale."
All these obstacles we face culminate into our own struggles which we will embrace or abandon just as Frantz Fanon has stated.
We are young people and a young mind is a curious one we would like to ‘explore’ the many avenues at our disposal while the moment is ripe, we are not the most perfect beings to ever grace this continent we are going to make mistake. It is wiser to learn from others’ experiences whether good or bad but nothing flies over the knowledge received when one truly experiences something themselves.
Listen to the lyrics in our various ‘new’ age musical genres, our poetry, literature, fashion and the art a lion’s share of it is a reflection of young people who continue to repatriate to more Afrocentric ways of being and remain strong in the fight against a chameleon-charactered Beast that has learnt our languages, the way we live but remain an exploitive Beast. To the older generation give us a chance to be young and who knows may be Ayi Armah’s beautiful ones are actually us we just haven’t realized it yet or perhaps the more human face Black Consciousness sought to bestow on humanity will be by our efforts, we too wish to tell your grandchildren how much we contributed to their well being and we would have achieved it without martyrdom.
In conclusion we the young lions must remember that our youth erodes every moment we breathe and we should not shoot down advice and suggestion from those who’ve been where we are because we too will someday be the older generation and would not want our advice and guidance to be answered by a rebellious youth saying “I was not present in your youth”. Let’s use Youth month as a period to take stock of what we done throughout the year.
- Khayalethu A. Sibeko (2007) © |
