The Lost Generation of the Rainbow Nation

Cultural identity and capitalist Technology

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation call us the lost generation, perhaps because we have lost touch with our own cultures and are acquiring the modern culture. But it is precisely these capitalist agencies that dictate terms to our governments, which leads to us living in a divided society where we compete for resources. It is them who are forcing us to adopt Western culture through promoting the capitalist ideology that claims to be the only correct worldview.Under this pressure even our grandparents are deprived of the opportunity of story telling as they are also glued to television screens. People now invite you to ‘umsebenzi wamadlozi’ via SMS or e-mail claiming that this is a quick and cheap way of communicating. Quality time with families is impossible. Children spend their time on video or computer games. Most of our parents are happy with this change and proud that their children are clever because they can use all these new technological marvels. But this is splitting families and makes family life revolve around getting more money for more technologically enhanced toys. Parents earn respect of their children if they can provide this technology; meanwhile our cultures are dying a slow death.

Death of the mother tongue

The ruling class to lure young people into self-destruction is using television. To be part of established society you have to speak the queen’s language and be in touch with technology. What is happening to the young people today – greed, making a quick buck and competing with everyone is a reflection of what the capitalist society is feeding them through its institutions such as media and the school. Successful persons are those who own big motorcars, big houses, speak a lot of English and appear on television. It seems we all have to become celebrities in order to be role models. That is why multi-national companies pump huge amounts of money into non-educational programmes like COCA-COLA POPSTARS or POP-IDOLS. Educational programmes in African languages do not receive media support and receive very little support from the state.

Where is the Rainbow nation?

South Africa is a so-called multi-racial society and all the people of the rainbow nation are supposed to be living peacefully and together. We are free but must compete for jobs and basic services that are reserved for those who can pay for them. Our government has introduced a policy that is looking at redressing the legacy of apartheid, called Black Economic Empowerment. It is not clear where the place of poor youth is in this programme. Where is the place for all young people to share in their diversity and to build a unifying identity as South Africans?

Finding our role in society

We have started playing our most important role which is to fight for a classless society. A classless society has eluded past generations, we are making all the efforts towards bringing it about. Small steps towards this include a Political Economy of Education Workshop at Shaft 17 in 2002 and an Education Rights Project Youth Camp at Wits University in 2003. At the two events listed above young people carefully scrutinized the role of education in capitalist society. In addition we have held public meetings and marches in our schools and communities to highlight the poor state of education in our country.

Silumko Radebe is a young activist from Soweto and a member of the Anti-Privatisation Forum’s Education Sub-committee.