Youth Day: “Born Free?” A Deceptive and Dangerous Story about South Africa’s Youth

Each year on the 16th of June, South Africans commemorate Youth Day. It is a day on which we remember the sacrifices made by young people in the struggle against apartheid. In particular, we remember 176 people who were killed by the Apartheid police in the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising. They were part of a group of approximately 20,000 students who took to the streets to protest racist policies in the nation’s education system. In 2015-2017, young South Africans were once again at the forefront of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, which called for free, quality, decolonized higher education.

However, a rift has developed between these younger activists and their 1976 counterparts. One of the #RhodesMustFall student leaders, Ntobo Sbo Qwabe, said in 2016, “Older black people who want to silence us on the basis that they fought against apartheid need to shut the fuck up!!! We are here because you failed us! So please!” His statement expresses the frustrations of the so-called “born free” generation, who were born after the end of political apartheid in 1994 yet still live with the ongoing injustices of racism, poverty, unemployment, poor education, and hopelessness that their parents and grandparents faced before them. It has been almost three decades since the end of political apartheid in South Africa, and while this new generation of South African youth has experienced the “right to have rights” (as Seyla Benhabib describes it), the enactment of those rights has not been realized in any significant and transformative manner.

South Africa has a predominantly young population, with the average age of 27.6 years. Shockingly, 55.5 percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of less than US$2 per day, and unemployment sits at 29.1 percent. Moreover, South Africa remains the most economically unequalsociety in the world.

What is of particular concern is that the injustices of white privilege and black subjugation continue in the economic and spatial inequalities of black and white South Africans at present. The social economist Sampie Terreblanche indicates that on average, white South Africans have never been as prosperous as they have become in the years since the end of political apartheid. The average South African household income is R930 (US$64) per month while white South African’s earn on average 3 times more than black South Africans. White South Africans, who comprise less than 10 percent of the population, continue to dominate the ownership of private land, owning 72 percent of private land, while black South Africans, who make up 89 percent of the population, own 26 percent of private land.

Achille Mbembe, an African philosopher and political scientist, notes that young black South Africans are expressing their political, social, and economic discontent by turning first, to a politics of identity, pitting the races against one another, and second, to a generational politics, where young persons are increasingly distrusting of older activists and liberation leaders as “sellouts.” Finally, the young are turning to a politics of impatience, where they seek rapid and significant transformation by revolution rather than social evolution.

Young people, in particular, experience the utter hopelessness of the slow violence of poverty, racism, and injustice. In short, they are losing hope for the future. In this regard, one could question whether these young South Africans are really “born free.” Language matters. It can witness to the truth and communicate it with clarity and intent. Or, as the student activist Lovelyn Nwadeyi notes, language can be used to “perpetuate a deceptive and dangerous story” of untruth and a false reality.

At a Youth Day lecture, commemorating the students who were slain in the 1976 Soweto Massacre, she said,

I completely and unequivocally reject the term ‘”born free” because this is a term that perpetuates a deceptive and dangerous story about the reality of South African youth. Phrases like “born free” and “rainbow nation,” amongst others, have come to find comfort in the mediocre lexicon that we have entertained since the end of apartheid in South Africa. I personally struggle with words like “born free” and “rainbow nation” as I’ve experienced these words as tools for silencing, silencing and diminishing the genuine grievances of young people, and particularly young South Africans of colour. I also think that the process of meaning making that is associated with this ideology of “born free-ism” and “rainbow-ism” is one of the most insidious and powerful attempts at whitewashing the complexities of the struggle for liberation in this country.

Indeed, language matters! Just as we question the uncritical use of the phrase “post-apartheid South Africa” (in what “real” sense has apartheid ended in South Africa?), we also need to question the use of the phrase “born free.” What happens when we label a whole generation of persons as “free” just by virtue of the date of their birth? Nwadeyi suggests that in doing so, we politicize the act of their birth and indeed by virtue of that, we politicize the very existence of children and young people. We do not have the right to impose a label, particularly an untrue label, that denies the suffering and daily reality of the majority of young South Africans. Nwadeyi notes, “It is part of perpetuating a false narrative that disguises the terror, the violence, the deliberateness, and the logic of erasure, that is core to the formation of the story of modern South Africa at various points in this 25-year long journey after 1994.”

So, for the sake of truth, and in pursuit of justice let us dispense of the myth of the “born free” generation. Let us face the realities of the current South African context with honesty and courage so that we can work for change. It is only in doing so that South Africans can move from the myth of freedom towards the reality of freedom that young South Africans long for.

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I wrote this article for 'Counterpoint Knowledge', you can find the originally published article here.

Why the 'loss of faith' in heroes like Mandela may not be such a bad thing

Why the 'loss of faith' in heroes like Mandela may not be such a bad thing

Dion Forster, Stellenbosch University

The legacy of anti-apartheid activists no longer has currency for many of today’s youth. They believe that they have been failed by the older generation of political leaders, including Nelson Mandela.

A recent Facebook post by the controversial Oxford University student and Mandela Rhodes scholar, Ntokozo Sbo Qwabe reflects this.

Older black people who want to silence us on the basis that they fought against apartheid need to shut the fuck up!!! We are here because you failed us! So please!

Qwabe is expressing a sentiment that is fairly common among contemporary South African student activists associated with the country’s “fallist” movements - including #RhodesMustFall #FeesMustFall .

One could say that they have “lost faith” in the legacy of anti-apartheid heroes of yesteryear and the supposed freedoms they have won.

Some may be unsettled, or even angered, by this loss of confidence in the liberation struggle heroes. But I am of the opinion that this loss of faith may not be such a terrible thing in the end. Losing a naïve and untrue “religious conviction” might actually be a sign of the emergence of a more honest and mature commitment to an ethics of responsibility.

South Africa is not unique in this. North American activist and philosopher, Cornel West, recently made a radical statement at a “Keep Ferguson Alive!” event. He said:

I come from a school of thought that believes that a certain kind of atheism is always healthy… Because what atheism does is that it at least cleans the deck because it claims that all gods are idols… We live in a society in which idolatry is so ubiquitous… So, for a lot of people who have lost faith in god it is probably a healthy thing! Because the god they have lost faith in was probably an idol anyway…

Losing faith in a false god is not such a bad thing. Many South Africans are losing faith in a very subtle and deceptive form of civil religion that held many in thrall during the last 22 years of democracy. As shocking as it may be, perhaps Qwabe and West are not far from the truth.

Civil religion

After the euphoria of the peaceful transition to democratic political rule in South Africa in 1994, this subtle civil religion emerged in popular culture.

Sociologist Robert Bellah suggests that religion in the civil sphere is possible when citizens begin to shape a belief into a transcendent narrative of about their social and political reality. They begin to use religious or theological symbolism to describe social, political or economic systems and processes. The purpose of the “civil religion” is to work towards the project of an alternative social reality.

The birth of the South African post-apartheid civil religion took place 27 April 1994 – the day of first South African democratic elections. This event was lauded across the world, as a “miracle” of peaceful transition in the midst of a hostile and precarious social and political situation.

Many doomsday prophets had predicted the eruption of a civil war in the lead to up the elections. Instead, post-election media reports reflected a widespread sense of euphoria and joy. It was framed in the dense and symbolic theological and religious language of peace, reconciliation and even “God’s blessing”. This is not surprising in a country where [around 84% ]of its population profess religious beliefs of one kind or another. Such language is familiar. It has meaning and currency.

Mandela the ‘messiah’

Of course, every religion requires a saviour, and the Messiah of this civil religion was Nelson Mandela. He embodied in his person a capacity to envision a new future for the divided people of South Africa. He was widely regarded as a leader who displayed great courage, grace and a reconciling nature.

His virtuous character was presented as an example to be followed by all persons who strive to be good citizens. Today many wonder about the negotiated compromises he entered into during his presidency and the transition to democratic rule. Perhaps, he was only human after all. Even if he was a remarkable human, he is not divine.

The high priest of the newly democratic South Africa’s civil religion was Desmond Tutu, who coined the primary discourse of the (civil) religion in the language of the “rainbow nation”. The character of the religion, and its doctrinal centre was an eschatological harmony based on national reconciliation.

This miracle was to be ushered in through a social event – a ritual. The ritual that served as a moral and psychological symbol of the civil religion was the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Sadly, the legacy of the TRC is contested. Perpetrators walked free while victims remained uncompensated.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu Mike Hutchings/Reuters

The civil religion’s sacred text was the 1996 South African Constitution (1996) and the Bill of Rights. The hymn for the civil religion was national anthem, Nkosi sikele’iAfrika(God bless Africa]). But some worry that the constitution protects the rights of the privileged and does not go far enough in allowing for restorative justice for the poor.

So, what has become clear in recent years is that there is significant loss of confidence in the discourses of the new South Africa - the rainbow nation, and all of the saints, heroes, and rituals. People are losing faith in this civil religion. This disenchantment is most clearly expressed in the words and actions of the “born free” activists, such as Qwabe.

They believe that we find ourselves in a more deeply divided, more economically unjust and politically corrupt nation because of our beliefs in these persons, in their legacies, and in the institutions they established.

While many may struggle to agree with the methods of the ‘fallist’ youth, perhaps they are pointing us in the right direction? Yes, Mandela did something remarkable. But he is not our saviour. Tutu and the TRC are inspiring and important. But now we need something for this time. Yes, democracy is an opportunity for transformation. But the 1994 elections were not the end of our process. That was only the beginning.

And so, I am of the mind that we should lose our false civil religion and exchange it for an ethics of responsibility. The poet June Jordan said it most aptly, reflecting on the women’s march to the Union Buildings in 1956:

And who will join this standing up … We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Dion Forster, Head of Department, Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Public Theology, Director of the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, Stellenbosch University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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You may find these two videos (related to Nelson Mandela, and the end of Civil Religion) interesting.

'Losing my religion (in Basel)'

Nelson Mandela and the Methodists - faith, fact and fallacy