South Africa’s youth are a generation lost under democracy: Study

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South *******’s youth are a generation lost under democracy: Study

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

South ******** president Cyril Ramaphosa recently

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in which the country’s youth—”democracy’s children”—had enormous opportunities for advancement, all thanks to successive post-apartheid governments led by the ******** National Congress (ANC) that he leads.

But what is the real state of young South Africans—defined as people below the age of 34—after 30 years of democracy?

I have more than

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in socio-economic and development research as well as political and governance reform. My recent research paper tracing

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has found that youth in South *******, who make up

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, have not fared well under democracy. They are the hardest-hit by

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and the lack of opportunities, and show high alienation.

Fewer young people are doing as well as their counterparts from 30 years ago; most are muddling along, searching for opportunities.

Measuring marginalization

The idea of “marginalization,” as used in my analysis, had its origins in the early 1990s. In 1992 a large survey,

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, was run by

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and I among South ******** youth of all races so that the first democratic government could understand what they needed most. The survey recorded indicators like unemployment and level of education, as well as subjective views like feelings of alienation (not belonging in society).

The results were arranged on a scale of how far some young people had been pushed to the margins of society. Those who scored in the negative on all, or almost all, indicators were labeled “lost.” Those who barely featured or did not score at all on the negative indicators were labeled “fine.” Others fell in between.

The survey was run again in later years, with amendments. The most recent, analyzed here, was in 2018, as part of a broader quality of life survey.

Comparing data from the 1992 and 2018 indices of youth marginalization, the same proportion (5%) is clearly “lost”—scoring off the chart on virtually every indicator. Sadly, at the other extreme, where 25% of youth were “fine” in 1992, this had dropped to 16% in 2018.

In the two categories in between—”marginalized” and “at risk”—the more worrying “marginalized” has shrunk, which is positive, while “at risk” has grown.

South ******* has changed profoundly since apartheid, and for some, including some young people, there are countless more opportunities than previously. But, analyzed as a generational cohort, youth today are only a little better off than when apartheid ended in 1994. And the share of young people are doing well now has fallen by 9 percentage points.

Looking at the 15-24 cohort in late 2023, using the

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, a staggering 60.7% are officially unemployed; among the group aged 25-34, unemployment only drops to

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.

Youth are meant to be a generation enjoying a democratic dividend and contributing to a

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. Neither appears true. In terms of how much potential South ******* has squandered, they represent an entire generation of opportunity lost to the country.

Marginalized but not lost

In the 1980s and early 1990s, youth had taken on ****** roles in political struggles. As ever, they demonstrated their instrumental value to the adults controlling ********* on various sides. Those same adults and the media spoke of a “

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“—specifically, ******, male, urban youth.

For the

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and

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involved in organizing the youth in the 1990–94 interregnum through their NGO, the

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, the lost generation discourse was anathema. Firstly, because in their view no-one is ever “lost” in spiritual terms; and secondly because of the stigmatizing and policy implications of writing off young (******) people entirely.

This gave rise to the “marginalized youth” movement, which sought to understand youth on their own terms, to identify those at risk, those who were doing fine, and those who were pushed right to the margins of society—and design policy responses accordingly.

Marginalization over time

In 1993, after first presenting to assembled youth organizations in 1992, we released the first iteration of the marginalization index,

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. It comprised 12 dimensions of concern and 32 variables. These included personal experiences of ******, recidivism, exposure to *********, family status, attitudes to race, self-image, health, political alienation, social involvement, employment status, generational conflict and fatalism.

Despite the belief of our ******* sponsors that no-one is ever truly “lost,” that became the central category of the index. In all, 5% of respondents scored high on all, or most, of the indicators in the 12 dimensions. “We use the term ‘lost’ with care,” we wrote at the time, but some 500,000 people had “slipped through, or been shoved through, the

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.

We found that a quarter of youth were “fine”—they only registered positive outcomes on the index. Four in ten were “at risk”: they were showing signs of concern on a few dimensions in the index. “Marginalized” youth were most in need of urgent intervention. They comprised more than a quarter (27%) of the 1992 sample and scored high on many of the 12 dimensions of concern. How to keep them from slipping further should have been a key policy challenge for the democratic *******.

The index was changed after 1994, since some indicators were specific to the transition South ******* was going through and others, such as **** and AIDS, had barely featured in the early iteration of the index.

It was rerun in 2000 (only on ****** ******** youth), and results suggested their status was improving: no respondent scored high on more than eight of the 12 areas of concern.

In other words, eight years after the first measurement, where 5% of youth appeared “lost,” no urban ****** ******** youth in 2000 fell into the “lost” category. Four in 10 (44%) respondents were “at risk,” scoring high on two or three areas of concern; another 33% scored high on slightly less than half the areas of concern. It seemed that progress was being made.

Most of the items in the index were later used by the

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in its early

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, allowing analysis of marginalization across the entire

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.

The total of those who are were “fine” (using the 2018 data) fell to 16% of youth, from a high of 25% in 1992. At the other extreme, we found 5% of Gauteng youth were again “lost.” The trend suggested that 2000 was a high point. After that, young respondents were doing less and less well, both objectively and subjectively.

Behind the overall data is a predictable racialization. For example, in the 2018 analysis, while a third of white (33.3%) and Indian (34.8%) youth were “fine,” this was true for only 14.1% of ******** and 22.1% of

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youth. This pattern has remained true since the index began in 1992. In 2018, to be young, ****** and male in Gauteng was to have the highest likelihood of being marginalized. Only 0.3% of white youth (and 0.5% of Indian youth) showed signs of high marginalization.

Yet, despite having ******* young people, the governing ANC’s

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only manages anodyne promises to “create opportunities” for young people, suggesting South ******* will continue to waste the massive resource represented by our youth.

Provided by
The Conversation

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Citation:
South *******’s youth are a generation lost under democracy: Study (2024, April 25)
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