South Africa has spent three many years increasing entry to schooling.
The subsequent struggle is totally different: changing {qualifications} into earnings, expertise into enterprise, and political rights into financial energy.
In keeping with Stats SA, within the first quarter of 2026, 60.9% of South Africans aged 15 to 24 had been unemployed.
When contemplating the variety of people who find themselves not in employment, schooling, or coaching (NEET), Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Pressure Survey revealed that 37.6% of individuals aged 15-24 had been within the NEET class.
That is the outline of a technology that has been locked out of the economic system earlier than it has had a good probability to enter it.
As we rejoice and commemorate Youth Day in South Africa, we acknowledge and keep in mind the braveness of younger individuals who modified the course of historical past.
In doing so, we should not discover undue consolation as a result of the youth of 1976 confirmed us and generations to come back what resistance and activism actually are.
In addition they confirmed us who the chief architects of change are: youth.
Our world is typified by disruption and speedy change due to expertise, largely, and the chance we face consequently is that society is turning into more and more comfy with expertise, reasonably than humanity driving disruption and alter.
The heroes of 1976 disrupted a system that denied them dignity, alternative, and self-determination.
Many sacrificed their schooling, their futures, and, in some instances, their lives.
Bodily and political freedom was what was at stake.
Right this moment, it’s maybe not these freedoms, however financial freedom and freedom of the thoughts which can be at stake, and we should ask, ought to we not be doing all we are able to to struggle for that?
This isn’t to romanticise the previous or condemn the current.
The circumstances are totally different.
Apartheid offered younger individuals with a visual enemy, a visual state, and a visual injustice.
Right this moment’s youth face a extra complicated system: unemployment, inequality, corruption, weak development, underperforming colleges, fragile municipalities, digital disruption, and an economic system that always calls for expertise from individuals it has by no means allowed to achieve expertise.
Political freedom delivered rights of entry.
It opened establishments that had been closed to the bulk.
It created the potential of financial participation. But it surely didn’t assure financial independence.
Right this moment, an adolescent can vote, examine, graduate, and nonetheless stay unemployed.
An adolescent can full a qualification and nonetheless be informed they lack expertise.
An adolescent can attend an entrepreneurship workshop and nonetheless don’t have any entry to markets, mentorship, or start-up capital.
That is the unfinished enterprise of freedom.
Training nonetheless issues deeply. The issue is just not that {qualifications} have grow to be irrelevant.
The issue is that {qualifications} alone are not sufficient.
South Africa has spent three many years increasing entry to many issues, together with schooling.
The subsequent part should be about conversion: changing studying into considering, and considering into work, expertise into earnings, and {qualifications} into financial company.
We rely the variety of younger individuals educated, not the variety of companies nonetheless working two years later.
So, what then about entrepreneurship and its function in affording younger individuals pathways to freedom?
We rejoice pitch days, certificates, and incubator launches, however we’re much less disciplined about monitoring income development, job creation, or market entry.
Entrepreneurship can’t be constructed via motivation alone.
Younger individuals want sensible ecosystems: clients, finance, networks, digital instruments, compliance help, and skilled mentors.
The identical applies to expertise improvement. South Africa doesn’t undergo from a scarcity of insurance policies, levies, or programmes.
It suffers from weak alignment between cash spent and outcomes achieved.
The aim of expertise improvement shouldn’t be to course of learners via administrative programs.
It must be to maneuver individuals into work, enterprise, or additional studying with thoughtfulness, mindfulness, and an ethical compass underpinning their contribution to the world.
If a programme can not present that motion, we must always ask whether or not it’s improvement or merely exercise and whether or not it’s of any worth.
We should even be sincere about youth company.
Younger South Africans aren’t passive, however many are exhausted, disillusioned, and unsure about the place to direct their frustration.
Their activism typically takes totally different types from earlier generations: digital campaigns, social commentary, neighborhood initiatives, artistic enterprise and casual financial survival.
However digital expression is just not all the time the identical as organised social change.
The deeper query is whether or not now we have lowered our expectations of younger individuals or positioned inconceivable expectations on them.
We inform them they need to take their future into their very own arms and be proactive in all that they do.
However can we count on them to resolve unemployment, corruption, inequality, local weather change, and technological disruption, whereas many are nonetheless attempting to safe their first steady earnings? I believe not.
On the similar time, we generally talk about youth solely as recipients of help, not as residents with duty, company, and energy.
Each extremes are unhelpful.
Younger individuals shouldn’t be blamed for a system they inherited.
However neither ought to they be excused from shaping the long run they’ll inhabit.
Each technology that modified South Africa needed to sacrifice one thing.
The sacrifice required right now might not be the identical as in 1976, however it’s nonetheless actual: the self-discipline to accumulate related expertise, the braveness to construct enterprises, the duty to take part politically, and the willingness to organise past criticism.
Authorities, enterprise, and schooling establishments should additionally cease treating youth improvement as a slogan.
First, private and non-private funding for schooling and expertise programmes must be tied to measurable outcomes. Enrolment and completion aren’t sufficient.
Second, each enterprise {and professional} qualification ought to embed AI literacy, entrepreneurship, and work-integrated studying as core competencies.
These shouldn’t be non-compulsory extras for privileged college students.
They’re now fundamental instruments for financial participation.
Third, employer-education partnerships ought to grow to be a part of formal company accountability.
Firms that declare to spend money on expertise improvement ought to report what number of younger individuals they place, mentor, retain, and promote.
The youth of 1976 fought for political freedom.
The youth of 2026 face a unique battle: financial freedom in a rustic that has opened the door however left too many standing outdoors.
The duty doesn’t relaxation with younger individuals alone. But it surely can not exclude them both.
Every technology should determine what it’s ready to construct, disrupt, and sacrifice for the subsequent.
South Africa’s subsequent youth battle shall be received by changing schooling into alternative, frustration into organisation, and political freedom into financial energy.
*The aurthor of this text is Dr. Shahiem Patel, Dean of Regent Enterprise College. The views expressed by Dr. Shahiem Patel aren’t essentially these of The Bulrushes
