Chair, if ever there was anything that ought to unite South Africans, it is the future of our youth, as well as their empowerment in order to equip them with the capability of constructing and inhabiting the future.
Today our nation's collective wellbeing depends precisely on the careful crafting of our future through our youth. The most urgent challenge facing South Africa's youth is that of economic participation through job skills and economic empowerment, as well as through education.
That education is important needs no further emphasis, I think, but we must say that our nation needs to pay particular urgent attention to the education of the black child who, even today, continues to bear the brunt of the legacy of Bantu education and other weaknesses in our current education system.
The black child, when his or her contemporaries spend between six and eight hours on learning from teaching and instruction, spends about three. We need to pay urgent attention to this so that we raise their level of education to that of their white counterparts and the other black learners who have been fortunate enough to go to historically white learning institutions and even private schools. This means that we have to eradicate everything in the path of black learners that inhibits their right to learning and do all we can together as a society to enhance their opportunities in education.
We also need to urge South African youth to unite against xenophobia and attacks on foreign nationals. The point made earlier today by the Deputy President needs to be emphasised. We must never accept that we can easily resort to blaming foreign nationals for all our woes and all the challenges that we face as a nation, and particularly as young people.
What the ANC Youth League is raising, hon Van Lingen, are issues for debate which do not constitute ANC or government policy. They are issues that the ANC Youth League is entitled to raise, issues that every young person has a right to raise. They are not about entitlement; they are about what policy choices different sectors of our community think are required in order to move South Africa to the next level in our quest for total social emancipation.
Because they are young people, they sometimes raise them wrongly, and sometimes in a disrespectful manner. I should know this because I was once, not so long ago, in that position. But the duty of the elders in society is to hone the youth, to get the youth in line, to tell the youth when they are wrong that they are wrong, and to direct the youth's conduct and behaviour. And I think the South African youth can learn, will learn and will listen.
Hon Bloem raised interesting things. Firstly, he talked about corruption, as though it started after he had left the ANC. We can remind him not only of incidents, but also of names of people that have gone to Cope who can clearly be associated with corruption.
Secondly, he said government had been promising jobs since 2009, but he knows that can't be correct. This issue existed even when he was still a member of the ANC. Conveniently today, and probably out of opportunism, he has chosen to forget that, as though life started in 2009, after he had left the ANC.
The fact of the matter is that between 2001 and 2008, South Africa experienced the most sustained period of not only growth but also job creation. Sure, the number of jobs created was not commensurate with the demand and need in our society but, in reality, jobs were created. In reality, what destroyed jobs in South Africa was the global financial crisis. And in reality, the number of jobs has begun to grow again. But opportunism will never allow you to say this. The challenge that we are facing as a country didn't begin after he left the ANC.
The youth of 1976 were neither saints nor angels, and I think we need to avoid the easy temptation to treat them as though Comrade Dan and his generation were angels who never put a foot wrong.
There is a question we need to ask but, firstly, maybe what we need to avoid is contrasting today's youth with those of 1976 and using the youth of 1976 as a whip to whip today's youth. We should not be saying to today's youth that they are nothing, that they are incapable, and that they can't achieve because they are not part of 1976.
The question I ask, which I have asked before in this House, is how the youth of 1976 would have behaved today, or, how today's youth would have behaved in 1976. Remember that it is not your ideas that create your reality; it is your reality that creates, shapes and moulds your ideas. [Applause.] I would put my head on the block and swear that if you took today's generation and placed them in 1976, they would do exactly the same as Dan Montsitsi and his generation did. The youth of 1976, if they had been put in 2011, would have faced exactly the same challenges as we are facing today.
The challenge for us is never to give up on our youth. The challenge for us is always to stand up for them, to correct them where they are wrong, to be firm with them, to encourage them when they do right, to allow them to think and express themselves, and to correct that thinking when it is expressed in a wrong manner.
Hon Comrade Bloem quoted Comrade Vavi on youth unemployment. In actual fact, Census 1996 already pointed to the fact that 70% of all unemployed people were youth. I remember this, as I was the President of the ANC Youth League at the time. In 1996 we raised the challenge of youth unemployment as the biggest challenge facing the youth of our country and facing South Africa itself. So, nothing new is being raised. When people who are sleeping wake up and realise that there is a problem of youth unemployment, it can't be treated as though what they are saying is right just because somebody in Cope thinks that they are right. [Interjection.] No, no! It is you who think they are right.
Now, this problem is not new, and I think we need to address it with the urgency it deserves. Again, it is a challenge that needs the nation to unite.
The ANC does not fear the youth, nor do the youth think the ANC is the enemy. Were that the case, we would not today be enjoying the overwhelming support of the South African youth, as we do. [Interjections.]
Even as the youth raise the particular challenges they face, they are clear that this is what they want government to address.
The sushi episode has been condemned by everyone, and I don't think we need to hang on to it as though it were the end of our country. It was demeaning, it was embarrassing, and we condemned everyone who participated in it but, Chairperson, life goes on. That episode represented neither the youth of the ANC, nor the youth of South Africa as a whole.
Finally, I think the obsession with the President of the ANC Youth League really doesn't help us to take this country forward. He is not all that happens in South Africa. He doesn't try to be all. He may be outspoken, but we all were at one stage or another. If you were not, you have lost out on your youth! [Interjections.] I know, because I was once in that position. When you speak, you speak your mind. When you speak, you say what comes into your mind and you will be corrected later. [Interjections.] But the obsession with Julius Malema doesn't take South Africa anywhere. [Interjections.]
I think the people who are obsessed with him must start asking pertinent questions about youth development in the provinces and municipalities led by their own parties. We are not obsessed with Madam Helen Zille. We are not obsessed with Madam Patricia De Lille and the fact that she has hopped from the extreme left to the extreme right in one lifetime. [Interjections.] We are not obsessing about it, so get over Julius Malema. Thank you. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.