Youth voices in South Africa

The youth are becoming extremely important participants in the politics, social structures and systems, etc. in South Africa. They are the future leaders of tomorrow hence they should be able to voice out on the issues and this is what the talk from Gerald Boyce was suppose to be about, in his attempt to do this he has committed a few faults. Therefore the amount of participation was a lot less limited to what it could have been.

The talk covered topics such as the young people’s interest in voting or the lack of it rather. The youth has lost interest in voting, most of them see it as being an insignificant thing, that it does not make a difference if they participate or not. This is very misleading and it will affect the youth in the near future, we all know that in order to make a change one has to get involved and take the initiative and let their voices be heard and if they do not exercise this freedom of voting, then they are inhibiting other possibilities.

Mr Boyce presented his talk on the youth voices in a rather unconventional way. He used data that was systematically presented, therefore discouraged any involvement from the audience, more so from the youth, seeing that the talk was about the youth and its issues as South African citizens.

In his presentation he paid so much attention on race and I think was totally exaggerated, fine we have not passed that stage yet, were all people are free from racial discrimination but this did not make his arguments and findings anymore valid. I think that the speaker should have been more open to engagement from the audience. He could have presented his talk in a more qualitative method and focused on the current issues affecting the youth.

By Busisiwe Busenga