By Sibulele Siko-Shosha
THE country is now at the tail end of a monumental month in our annual calendar, Youth Month. This month is symbolic of the brave and change-driven spirit that the country’s then youth had in order to change the then status quo.
It is also a symbol of hope and the potential it can birth when young people in this country decide to work together for a common cause. Pre-Covid, Youth Day and its subsequent month was filled with youth-focused events and activities that celebrate the triumphant that is now aligned to a generational perception of who South African youths are.
For me this month has always been one long PR exercise for government and the corporate community to commemorate. We live in a country of catch phrases and dances, what I see as being the greatest deflectors for us addressing the real issues we need to solve.
The Covid restrictions over the past two Youth Days has forced us to have more introspective Youth Months. Minus the perception management and publicity activities, Youth Month has unconsciously highlighted the new fight for South African youth, economic emancipation. A quick disclaimer before I continue; I am in no way affiliated to any political party or movement. My views on this matter are purely experience and perceptive based. Now that is out of the way, we can continue.
South Africa is currently experiencing another pandemic, which is youth unemployment. Currently sitting at 46.3%, Covid-19 has been tagged as the poster child for causing job losses, but the reality is that South African has had a youth employment crisis way before the global pandemic. The stagnation of transformation in the South African business and entrepreneurship ecosystem is the pre-emptor for this. The euphoric spirit of development programmes that were geared at transformation is currently collecting dust in the dark abyss of our country’s library of failed economic transformation initiatives.
We are 27 years into democracy, and only 2% of companies listed on the JSE are black owned.
This is the epicentre of transformation that can trickle down opportunities for our youth and we have only been able to secure just over a percent.
Could entrepreneurship then be the answer? Based on my experience, no! Entrepreneurship in this country is like playing Russian Roulette with your future.
The only thing you can do is hope for the best. I think we can all agree on the reality that hope cannot pay the bills. I feel like this country’s youth has been set up for failure, the endless campaign, the tag lines and the dances.
Without real access to the sources of wealth, but most importantly without being given the room to fail and learn from those failures, sustainable youth entrepreneurship success will forever remain a perception exercise. It is not in the DNA of South Africa’s youth to want things on a silver platter, fighting is what we know. But how do we fight when there are too many fights to be had; what is the most important fight and how do we determine that?
Unless I am missing something, but it does not feel like there was much foresight given into sustainable entrepreneurial development in South African. This therefore leaves us with the brunt of fighting multiple battles we run the risk of not conquering in our lifetime.
Sibulele Siko-Shosha is the founder, creative director and TV executive producer of the Dumile Group.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL or of title sites.
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