The Sunday Independent

Redouble efforts to bring youth into mainstream society

THIS year, South Africa marks 45 years since the 1976 youth-led uprising that accelerated our attainment of freedom and democracy.

It is also the 25th anniversary of Parliament’s adoption of the Constitution and its signing into law by President Nelson Mandela.

To mark this dual milestone, Parliament, government and society at large must take stock of progress made in main-streaming young people in every facet of life. We celebrate the contribution of the 1976 cohort to the creation of a better life for all.

However, it is now our responsibility to work hard to build a better society for future generations. Our Constitution guarantees basic human rights, dignity, equality and freedom.

We also enjoy a range of second-generation rights, including access to clean water, electricity, housing and education. These successes were wrought from past struggles for freedom, but so much more must be done to realise the future envisaged in the National Development Plan, in Africa’s Vision 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

South Africa’s youth bear the brunt of unemployment, inequality, poverty, crime, and gender-based violence. It is for this reason that we must place them at the centre of all our work.

At the 2020 Youth Parliament and a follow-up engagement with the ministers led by the Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Sylvia Lucas, and the National Assembly Deputy Speaker Lechesa Tsenoli, Parliament pledged to do all it can to place young people at the centre of building the South Africa of our dreams, to ensure their key position in all aspects of governance and civil society.

Parliament has seen a steady increase in the number of young Members of Parliament, with 1.89% of MPs aged 30 or younger and 15.09% younger than 40. A 2020 Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) study ranked the South African Parliament seventh and 10th respectively in these age categories among world parliaments.

The growing numbers of young MPs contribute new ideas and greater energy to delivering on Parliament’s mandate of law-making, overseeing the work of the executive and in promoting public participation. As an activist, responsive people’s Parliament, youth engagements take place in a sectoral Youth Parliament, with a focus on achieving real improvements in the lives of young people.

However, Covid-19 has worsened pre-existing challenges and disillusionments, and finding solutions has become more urgent. The 2020 youth sessions admitted this fact, acknowledging that we would be sowing the seeds of social and economic destruction if challenges are left unchecked.

One of the sixth Parliament’s priorities is to strengthen oversight. To this end, when government ministers accounted to Parliament for work done, we secured from them undertakings to address skills development and to mainstream the youth in state procurement.

They also undertook to create employment in the creative industries and in manufacturing, and to maximise the opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Parliament is now collecting and consolidating state institutions’ progress reports, which will be published and used to provide feedback to all youth formations. Parliament has also introduced quarterly reports on progress made in executing executive undertakings and resolutions. These include:

1. Overhauling the education system and strengthening TVET colleges to build stronger relations with industry, while creating “job creators” rather than “job seekers”.

2.Widening opportunities for youth to learn skills and optimise the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the eParliament system, opening up broadcast spectrum, making data affordable, and growing the green and township economies.

Parliament is committed to an outcomes-based model for its programmes based on empirical evidence. Public and stakeholder perception surveys undertaken by an independent agency provided evidence that Generation-Z (15-24) and youth (25 to 35 years) formed a gap in Parliament’s reach in terms of awareness, understanding, satisfaction with services and involvement in parliamentary processes.

The survey also showed that social media is the fastest growing (125% in three years) and preferred means of communicating with Parliament, along with TV and radio. Parliament is also delighted with the success of a new intervention to allow the public to submit email and WhatsApp submissions for public hearings, with more than 341 000 email and 6000 WhatsApp submissions made to date during the Covid-19 pandemic. Parliament’s Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts, most used by young people, have also seen unprecedented growth.

The IPU and the youth sessions flagged other possible interventions to centralise youth issues and improve youth representation, including the introduction of quotas and a structure to pursue youth matters on a daily basis in Parliament.

These issues Parliament will discuss for possible adoption. Parliament is confident that its new approach to youth activism, executive oversight and public participation will strengthen efforts to overcome the challenges facing young South Africans.

We owe it to the young liberators of 1976 and to build the South Africa of our dreams.

We call upon young people to use their hard-won democracy to vote in the October local government elections. Parliament, for its part, recommits to use all its powers to build a better society for the youth of today and of the future.

OPINION

en-za

2021-06-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thesundayindependent.pressreader.com/article/281990380468106

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