Address by the Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the
Youth Sector Consultative Workshop on Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative
of South Africa, 17 January 2006
Chairperson of the National Youth Commission,
Chairperson of the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, Malose Kekana,
Youth leaders from various formations,
This year will see the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising,
which took place on the 16th of June 1976, where the youth of our country were
catapulted to the centre-stage of the national democratic struggle. Since then
the role of the youth has gained new significance and the youth have played a
leading role in the struggle to liberate the country from the shackles of apartheid.
One of the outcomes of this leading role of the youth was that the majority
of the youth of our country saw the attainment of liberation as the most urgent
task. As a result, the late eighties and early nineties saw the development of
a concept of a marginalised youth.
With the dawn of the democratic dispensation
in 1994, the marginalisation of the youth had reached crisis proportions. Since
1994, however, the government has embarked on a number of initiatives to deal
with this legacy of youth marginalisation.
Before 1994 South Africa had
never institutionalized youth development issues. The democratic government has
worked hard to ensure that it reverses that situation. The following are the steps
the democratic order has taken to ensure that youth development is part of the
national transformation process:
- The inclusion of youth development
in the Reconstruction and Development Plan,
- The setting up of Youth Commissions
with advisory powers, to lobby and advocate for the implementation of youth development
programme by government departments,
- The adoption of the National Youth
Development Policy Framework. The Policy identifies five areas of strategic intervention
for sustainable youth development. These are: social well-being, youth economic
participation and empowerment, education and training, justice and safety,
setting up of the Umsobomvu Youth Fund.
While the government has
put all these systems and structures in place, many challenges do, however, remain.
Among these is the fact that youth constitute the majority of the poor and unemployed:
- 70% of the unemployed in SA are youths below the age of 35,
youth unemployment is highest in the 25-29 age bracket.
also challenges that relate to the programmatic and organisational issues of the
youth commission that still need to addressed. Among these are:
broad and relevant mandate of the National Youth Commission,
mandate of Umsobomvu Youth Fund on promotion of youth economic participation,
- Perceived duplication in the work of the National Youth Commission and
Umsobomvu Youth Fund,
- Youth need a "one-stop-shop" on youth
Government decided to support the process of the
review of youth development institutions in South Africa.
and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa aims to half unemployment and accelerate
economic growth. The youth and women should be the major beneficiaries of this
as the sectors that are highly affected by unemployment. As part of the ASGI-SA
the Government will be spending R 370 billion rands on infrastructure development,
youth must position itself correctly in order to benefit from this.
must think about how youth businesses should benefit, how much of this amount
should go towards youth enterprises, and implement strategies that will meet these
This poses a challenge to us to ensure that we fast-track the
development of youth skills both in general areas and in specific priority skills
that are required by the economy, for an example in Project Management and artisan
We must also pay a special attention to Unemployed Graduates and
ensure that we place them in jobs through the UYF and Standard Bank Databases.
We must also ensure that we link up the new youth professionals with the
Retired Skills program that is spearheaded by the DBSA which has already started
at municipal level.
Matriculants should also be assisted by way of re-opening
of trade schools and by developing their entrepreneurial skills.
to ensure that the youth are participating in numbers in Business Outsourcing
Process (BOPs), ICT and Tourism Sectors. There are real opportunities for the
youth in the development of township tourism as tour guides, language interpreters,
participating in the development of souvenir businesses and ensuring the safety
of tourists who come to our townships.
Our second Economy initiatives like
the Expanded Public Works Program should be geared towards dealing with youth
unemployment and skills development. There should be training of youth around
areas of early childhood development and home based care-givers for people who
are sick and old.
As a way of resolving some of these challenges, Government
has agreed that as part of a "build-up to 30th Anniversary to June 16"
the country will convene a Youth Development Convention to undertake the task
of reviewing these institutions as part of the broader policy review process.
Integration of Youth Development:
Government has also resolved that
youth development must be an integrated process. The approach is that the following
steps should be taken to ensure that this objective is realized:
clusters will need to incorporate youth development as part of the Programme of
- Positioning of youth development in government departments must
be streamlined, for instance Youth Directorates will have to be situated in the
offices of the Directors General,
- Incorporation of youth development
into the business plans of government departments,
- Localisation of youth
development by incorporating it into the Integrated Development Plans,
of the National Youth Service programme is under way,
- Youth have a role
in the social transformation of our country, fighting poverty and contributing
to the creation of work,
- Government Departments should integrate youth
service into their existing programmes,
- Youth service should be localized
by integrating it into Integrated Development Plans and Local Economic Developments,
- Education department should incorporate youth service into the curriculum,
- The need to learn from our fellow brothers and sisters on the African
Continent, (countries such as Nigeria have implemented successful models on youth
The youth have been critical of the role the private sector
has been playing in youth development. Considering the resources amassed by the
private sector, very little is being done that responds to the youth development
objectives as articulated in the National Youth Development Policy Framework.
"one company one learner" of the National Youth Commission should be
accelerated to allow more youth to receive experiential training and ultimately
to get absorbed into the world of work.
Izimbizo should serve as one of
the primary vehicles to popularise youth development work, MPPCs should serve
as information hubs for youth development,
Need to develop relevant strategies
to communicate our youth development work to rural youth, young women, young African
males, and young people with disabilities.
I wish you well as you deliberate
around the challenges that face the youth. I hope that this consultative process
will find responses to these challenges confronting our youth, not forgetting
the role of the NEPAD Youth Desk that you will need to collaborate with, because
South Africa cannot afford to deal only with only its issues without addressing
issues of development within the continent as a whole.