You have the opportunity to reshape the future of your country by using the power of your numbers to transform our politics from the dominance of competitive party politics, towards citizen focused compassion infused consensus politics to restore the hopes and dreams of all. You have the power to elect from amongst yourselves competent leaders who can use our national resources wisely to promote wellbeing for all within healthy ecosystems.
Reaching that dream so many sacrificed for is possible. It is in your hands! Each one of you has a responsibility to register and to vote in the 2024 elections to ensure the turning point critical to a successful future for our country. I am heartened to see progress being made in the registration of your age group. Five million more of you have registered compared to the case in 2019. But we need all of you to mobilise your peers to register and to vote.
I am particularly proud and grateful to civic initiatives such as Ground Up Collective led by Mbali Ntuli, which is mobilising young people in a creative appropriate way that appeals to your interests. The Maponya Mall event over last weekend is a case in point. I am also thrilled to see how Future's Elect led by Lindiwe Mazibuko continues to prepare young men and women professionals, entrepreneurs and business people for informed competent public representative roles. We cannot afford to continue with a Parliament led by people who have not been properly inducted into public representation roles based on our human rights-based Constitution.
Forty-eight years ago young people your age at high schools, universities and in the professions, defied the fear and despair of their parents and mobilised themselves to usher in a mass liberation movement. The spark came from a deliberate self-liberation process from self-doubt and mobilisation to raise the consciousness of young people of the power within each person to shape the future they yearn for.
The focus of the movement was to reclaim the right to the dignity of indigenous people and to assert our self-identity as Africans and proud citizens. We rejected the imposition of negative identities such as non-whites and non-Europeans. Emboldened high school students rejected Bantu Education as inferior education triggering the Soweto Uprising of 1976. A national uprising of students ignited the mass movement demanding total liberation from the indignity of racism, disrespect and social injustices of colonial domination. The political freedom ushered in in 1994 is the product of the efforts of cohorts of 18-50-year-olds nearly 48 years ago.
Today there are more of you aged 18-50 years, who are more educated, more skilled, more connected and networked than any other generation in our country's history. You have the opportunity to use the power of your numbers - estimated at 33 million of the total voter population estimated at 42 million to shape the future you desire. Imagine what the impact of each of you registering and voting for change would achieve! It is in your hands as President Mandela repeatedly reminded you!
Why would you be satisfied with living in a country that fails nearly two-thirds of each age cohort that starts school over the last few decades, when your peers of the 1970s-1980s rebelled against inferior education? Why would you allow yourselves to be lied to for so long since 1994 by the same failed education system declaring victory in announcing an 83% 2023 pass rate without acknowledging the hundreds of thousands of young people it has thrown under the bus? You should do the maths and connect the dots!
The poor quality of education goes beyond the numbers. Education is an essential tool to prepare you and your children for a prosperous future as self-liberated citizens. Quality self-liberating education supports the identification and promotion of talents to enable you to become the best unique members of our human family. The current public education system does not do a good job of preparing you to become well informed, critical thinking and creative citizens of your country. The good news is that there are models such as Leap Schools and the Maharishi Institute who are graduating young people from the poorest communities into self-liberated leaders. Your generation has what it takes to shape ours into a just society governed by the values of Ubuntu to promote wellbeing and prosperity for all.
Imagine what our society could look like with young creative competent and honest leaders and public servants! Imagine a country in which no young person is left to their own devices with no skills nor opportunities to acquire skills and use them to create their own livelihoods and enjoy the gifts of life! Imagine a country free of crime and insecurity! Imagine a country with every family living in dignity and peace! This is possible and within reach, but it depends on you playing your part.
I am also appealing to you as my sons and daughters who have left our beloved country because it became too dangerous for you as honest professionals and public servants. We need each one of you to register and vote so you can return home to shape the future you yearn for. A future in which to bring up your children with pride! This country is big enough for all of us as one human family working together to create prosperity for all.
Our country has all the resources we need to promote wellbeing for all and contribute to the emergence of a healthier planet! This country is part of the great continent of Africa that holds the key to the success of the human race. Africa has a youthful creative population, it has 60% of arable land to ensure food security, and it has most of the essential natural and mineral resources to promote sustainability. Success depends on our return to the source of the wisdom of our ancestors that calls us to our essence as an interconnected, interdependent species nested in the web of life. We can only thrive through living in harmony with one another and with nature of which we are a part!
The South Africa of our dreams is possible! Our country calls you to stand up and be counted by exercising your right and responsibilities of registering (online registrations continue until the election is called and gazetted by President Ramaphosa) and voting for the country of our dreams!
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