Incidence of Birth.

I remember growing up in a township household without a father figure; surrounded by poverty and stigma towards my HIV-positive mother. So I questioned myself: “Should I play victim of my fate or become the custodian of my future?”. South Africa, having 14 percent of its population households headed by females; with Kwazulu-Natal and Eastern Cape leading. This questions the natural growth of a child growing in an unstable environment, faced with numerous challenges especially towards a child’s psychological growth. As a young man that grew up under this feminization of poverty, it had become a virtual orthodoxy in my childhood. I find myself reluctant to believe that the youth of today is indolent but rather that they suffer the victimization of incidence of birth.

South African youth constitute 37 percent of its population while of these, only 40 percent have a matric certificate;11 percent black and 7 percent of coloured youth (aged 18 to 24) have tertiary education. This was not written to point fingers at the government nor the youth but the fact is our education system in townships is of poor quality compared to ‘Model C’ schools.

Should we blame the children for cheating on their matric exams or the teachers who provided cheating material? Our tertiary institutions consist of 60 percent white youth. This acknowleds that our over-expensive, bureaucratic tertiary institutions were not designed to accommodate black youth in a country with a black population of 80 percent.

Acknowledging that 70 percent of all unemployed people in South Africa are youth (mostly black) this creates frustration amongst the youth, especially those who have tertiary education but are finding difficulties in entering the labour market. Due to the lack of employment opportunities they are working as waiters in restaurants or busy packing clothes in retail outlets or driving taxi’s. Do we consider this youth as employed?

We would like to thank the government for learnership programs which exploit us by paying us R1500-R3500 when we do work beyond our remuneration.

We would also like to thank the government for introducing the Tax Incentive Act which exploits us and allows companies to employ us by reducing the amount of PAYE payable to SARS; and pay us the minimum wage.

We would like to thank the government for programs such as NASFAS because without it, the minority of black youth within such programs today would never have had access to tertiary education.

We would also like to thank them for making us to commence our careers indebted to NASFAS. We are grateful to acknowledge that we are victims of feminization of poverty as we grew up in female headed households.

We do not want handouts but opportunities without feeling guilty of our circumstance. We want to become custodians of our futures inspite of living in a society which is leading in levels of inequality between the rich and the poor.

There are many variables which we need to consider before we start labelling one another but my future is diverted from the fate my community presents to me. I honestly do not believe the youth is lazy but believe they suffer being victims of their incidence of birth.