http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=108122

Sisulu patronises SA’s legitimately angry youth

by Jacob Dlamini

THEY just don’t get it, do they? Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told Parliament on Tuesday that she wanted to reintroduce conscription. According to a report by Business Day Online, Sisulu said this “will not be a compulsory national service, but an unavoidable national service”. She was quick to say the government did not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Sisulu reportedly told Parliament that she wanted the defence force to provide a rite of passage for young people “leaving school with no skills and no prospect of being absorbed into a labour market that is already glutted”. She said: “Every culture known to men has a process of coming of age. This includes some initiation into responsible adulthood, where the line is drawn from childish ways to purposeful, responsible adult behaviour. We can do that for this country, because that is the one thing we need, to build a future for our development and prosperity. A place where the young unemployed can find skills, dignity and purpose.”

Sisulu presides over the most pampered, but also the most inefficient military in Africa, what on earth makes her think the aged, generally obese, unprofessional and ill- disciplined South African National Defence Force is equipped to teach young people about “responsible adult behaviour”?

Does she seriously expect the public to believe that entrusting young people to the bloated men and women who run the defence force will do the trick and help these young people draw the line between childishness and responsible adulthood? Aren’t these the same men and women who cannot command, let alone discipline, the soldiers at their command? Did we not have recently the spectacle of soldiers, some drunk and in uniform, going on the rampage outside the Union Buildings to demand better pay?

Yet Sisulu seems to think that it is in the company of these soldiers that young men and women will learn about discipline and the value of hard work.

But it is not only the military about which Sisulu has no clue. She told Parliament: “Any television footage of service delivery protests will show you that at the forefront of this, in great majority, are our youth, with excessive anger and misdirected energy and frustration etched on their faces. We as a country can ill afford this. Our youth are an asset and we must direct them properly.”

No, what SA can ill-afford are the arrogance and ignorance that assume that young people take part in “service delivery protests” because of excessive anger, misdirected energy and frustration.

The protests we have seen in recent years are not youthful and childish frolics that would disappear with a stint in the military.

I have studied protests in four different towns in two provinces and have learnt enough to know not to patronise those who take part in them.

In a corner of Piet Retief, the lives of young people are centred on the fetching of water. They have to wake up in the early hours of the morning to queue outside a communal spigot that is erratic at best. They must fetch water before walking long distances to one of the two high schools in the township.

The schools are overcrowded, teachers indifferent and education dodgy. The kids are not stupid. They know that life does not have to be this way.

In Standerton, young people see council officials driving “yachts” — cars so expensive everyone is forever asking how people working for one of the poorest municipalities in a depressed part of the country can afford such possessions. It is the same in Hazy View and Katlehong, where corruption has become a part of daily life. In these places, young people have little or no hope of ever getting state jobs unless they “know” someone important or are willing to pay for one.

Even the august defence force that Sisulu expects to turn young people into responsible adult citizens is not immune from the corruption that has become endemic. Speak to young people in these and other towns and they will tell you that you have no chance of getting a job in the military unless you are prepared to buy that job. That is the depressing reality that confronts young people throughout SA. They protest because they do not believe the new SA is serving them. They protest because they see that as the only way to make their grievances known. Not because they are childish and have pent- up energies that need an outlet.

Sisulu, who has not exactly covered herself in competence — never mind glory — in her long career as a minister, should know this basic truth. But she doesn’t. How could she be expected to know it when she, like the African National Congress, refuses to take seriously the meanings of the protests that have erupted all over the country?

Young people, old people, South Africans are protesting because the new SA has failed to deliver on its promises to them.

They are protesting because they do not like the arrogance of those in power. They do not like the haughtiness of those, like Sisulu, who seem to think that accounting to a democratically elected Parliament is doing the legislature a favour.

Truth be told, it is Sisulu who could do with some discipline. What young people need are schools that work, safe neighbourhoods, meaningful jobs and a belief in the future — something Sisulu and her comrades have failed to deliver in 16 years of trying.