“Youth Voice in SA Enchoes in the Age of Hope” was the theme of the programme by Gerard Boyce, a PHD student at University of KwaZulu Natal. A programme which was expected to be a discussion that would focus on tackling down the youth challenges turned out to be a survey presentation, a survey that seemed to have confused a lot of people.
According to Boyce the survey was a general survey of South African youth attitude, and the survey was categorised based on their race. The statistics produced by Boyce were confusing and seemed to be contradicting each other.
His statistics indicated that 55% of African youth is satisfied with democracy whereas on the other hand only 23% of White youth is satisfied with democracy. He further issued out that a large margin of 74% of White youth is satisfied with life as a whole, 45% of African, 48% and 58% of Coloured and Indian respectively were satisfied.
How can people who are satisfied with democracy be the one who are not satisfied with life, and those who are satisfied with life not be satisfied with democracy? I personally would never say I am satisfied with democracy if I am not satisfied with life because this would mean that democracy is not providing me with the kind of life I want to live. Boyce’s conclusion on the youth attitude was that the youth’s attitude was not determined by age but was determined by race in which they belong to.
The youth showed a lot of dissatisfaction and confusion, one stated that “there are many youth representatives in the country who come up with different surveys. When do we reach the stage where we get to know who we are and what is expected from us?
By Elethu Magele
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