Activist blames ‘lost generation’ on failed African leadership

African universities have been urged to provide high-quality education and training in skills for jobs to stop the emergence of lost generations of unemployed young people with a rising sense of helplessness and hopelessness, intolerable levels of disaffection, violence and dependency.

Professor Saths Cooper, the Pan-African Psychology Union president, made the call when he presented the 8th Annual ASSAf Humanities Lecture of the Academy of Science of South Africa on 10 September 2024 in Pretoria, South Africa.

He noted that most African youth are anxious and terrified about their future and blamed the situation on the continent’s failure of leadership. “Youth unemployment in Africa is now at 60%,” Cooper said.

Although his virtual presentation, ‘Are we failing our youth?’ centred on the South African experience, Cooper took a broad view of what is happening on the continent and beyond.

He explained that poverty, hunger and a lack of opportunities are instigating challenges that include terrorism, illegal migration and popular uprisings, which, if left unattended, will contribute to long-term socio-political crises and economic underdevelopment in the continent.

“On most nights, about 240 million people go hungry, while malnutrition kills more than 50% of Africa’s children,” he said.

Leaders do not listen to the youth

Cooper, one of the surviving prisoners who were held on Robben Island during the apartheid era in South Africa and a close associate of the Black Consciousness Movement founder, the late Steve Biko, said the political leadership of South Africa is failing the youth. “Uneven development, progress, intensifying inequality, and escalating political polarisation continue to affect the youth most.”

The current political leadership in South Africa and the rest of Africa has ignored the plight of the youth and is destroying their future by neglecting to listen to them. Quoting from The Devil’s Disciple, a play by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Cooper said: “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them, as that is the essence of humanity.”

However, he expressed optimism that job-skills training backed by quality humanities education could put youth in South Africa and the rest of Africa in a better position to face the future with confidence and without hate.

To Cooper, quality higher education in Africa is the best antidote to the increasing marginalisation of youth, warding off radicalisation, embracing extremist and fundamentalist ideas, and becoming couriers of terror and carriers of hate.

Citing an isiZulu proverb, ‘Umuthi ugotshwa usemanzi’, which translates as, ‘a tree is bent while it is still wet’, Cooper said wisdom and good behaviour are instilled when a person is still young.

In this context, Cooper told his audience that compulsory humanities course units at universities are vital. He suggested that students in their first year should be exposed to critical thinking, history, philosophy, and other academic fields that would help them better understand their environment.

Struggle youth outlived usefulness

He said it is vital for students to know the cultural background of their countries and societies. Quoting from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cooper said: “Men at some time are masters of their fates.” For Cooper, universities hold the key for the youth to own their fates.

He recalled with nostalgia how the youth in African countries participated in the struggle for independence and self-determination. For instance, in South Africa, many young people in tertiary institutions were actively involved in the fight against the apartheid regime.

However, Cooper said that although many young South Africans traded higher education for leading roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, their usefulness was expended by those who took the reins of power. “A short, glorious past existed only during Nelson Mandela’s presidency.”

Quoting the Family Policy Institute, a non-profit research and educational organisation dedicated to articulating family-centred issues in South Africa, Cooper told his audience that most of the people who were involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in their youth are still economically marginalised, and now their children appear to be in the same situation and are terrified of the future.

Apartheid all over again?

He attributed the high crime rate in South Africa and other African countries to economic exclusion and disempowerment of the youth. He cautioned that South Africa is becoming synonymous with the American ‘Wild West’, referring to the number of gunshot deaths in the townships.

According to Cooper, most young people in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa regard the legal systems as persecutors rather than upholders of human rights. He appeared worried about the emergence of youth protesters and activists whose actions in the past decade mimic the resistance to apartheid. “For South Africa, that is the core dilemma.”

He highlighted that few resources are allocated to benefit the poor communities that played significant roles in dismantling apartheid in South Africa. He said most of the resources in South Africa and the wider Congo River Basin benefit the former colonising powers and their local acolytes. “The scramble for African resources is still intact, just as it was in the 19th century.”

In addition to the exit of capital from Africa, Cooper said he is concerned about large numbers of, especially, educated young Africans migrating to work in Western Europe, the United States and the Middle East. He wonders why these people were finding work elsewhere and not at home.

Youth is the future

“The enemy is within us,” Cooper said. The West and other countries are grabbing all the experts from Africa, effectively causing a massive brain drain, and African leaders are entirely indifferent to talented youth migrating to foreign countries and, too often, say it is a good thing.

However, Cooper said that to defuse generational social, political and economic tensions, the South African leadership should understand that the country’s future rests with the youth. Quoting Dr Richard Munang, the deputy regional director of the United Nations Environment Programme Africa Office in Nairobi, Cooper said South Africa would not develop unless the youth were given leadership chances.

Addressing an African economic conference some years ago, Munang, an environmental and development policy expert, told delegates that young trees make up the forest. This analogy means that Africa’s youth will eventually determine its future, and it is time to engage them.

However, Cooper expressed concern that little engagement with the youth occurs in South Africa or other African countries. “Leaders are engrossed in their ideas and are not ready to share them with others, especially those living in poverty and under challenging circumstances.”

He reminded the political leadership in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa to realise that people are influenced by their circumstances. “Many of our people, especially the youth, are living in stench and decay instead of being trained into careers.”

‘Village’ should embrace youth

Responding to questions from the audience, Cooper said South Africa and many other African countries have created a generation that does not work at all, which is, in effect, a lost generation. He suggested that university graduates should be placed in internships and learn the necessary job-market skills.

He faulted education systems that should have taught students how to use the acquired knowledge but were satisfied with placing graduates on the periphery of professions and careers.

Highlighting the inherent dangers of an economically excluded youth without a means of earning a living with dignity, Cooper used another African proverb: “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” This proverb gives a chilling message that a child who is rejected, neglected or ignored by its community might resort to destructive behaviour.

However, although it is hard to predict whether this will occur in Africa soon, the signals from recent protests by educated youth in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda cannot be ignored. In this regard, Cooper asked a rhetorical question: “Are we digging ourselves into holes we will not be able to come out of?”

Education is the answer

Subsequently, he urged academics and other African intellectuals to engage in open public debates about the effects of ongoing coloniality and colonisation processes that never left Africa. “We need to expose the mediocre politics of our time embedded in state capture, ethnic politics and corruption.”

Cooper reminded his audience that how we treat the worst among us underpins our claim of being human.

Summarising Cooper’s presentation, Professor Stephanie Burton of Future Africa at the University of Pretoria agreed that a high-quality, broad-based university education is the best choice for graduate employability. It could also save the village from destruction.