Deputy Speaker, hon President of the Republic in absentia, members of the executive present here today, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, guests in the gallery, as the Congress of the People, we believe that South Africa belongs to all its youth across racial, gender and cultural divides.
To us it is very clear that the relevance of youth today cannot be something that we must all question. But the question that we must seek to answer is the question that says: What is it that is relevant that the youth of today do that was done by the youth of 1976? What are the issues at hand that the youth of 1976 sought to address, and what are the issues at hand that the youth of today should seek to address?
Young people are the future of this society. It is for this reason that all societies should nurture young people to play a meaningful role in their affairs and beyond. In turn, young people are expected to explore the limits of their opportunities and responsibilities in society.
In other words, the youth grow into the society, becoming part of it, they grow with it and eventually it grows them. This year marks the 33rd anniversary of the Soweto youth uprisings, which were characterised by the firing of bullets, spraying of teargas, killing and assault of young people whose sin was to demand their freedom, democracy and their right to education without being confined by language. The above explains how the body of a 12-year-old, Hector Peterson, was riddled with bullets of the agents of apartheid, dying in front of his comrades as they paved the way for the coming generation to take the spear and advance further.
The commemoration this month is coincidentally also in the month in which one of the greatest sons of this continent was born, one of the leaders produced by this country, one of the intellectuals that has defined and redefined the African Renaissance, our one and only, former President of this country, Thabo Mbeki. [Applause.] As the youth of this country, it is in that spirit that we must take this opportunity to wish him an early happy birthday and thank you, Zizi, for leaving a traceable legacy for us as the youth.
The current state of youth development of our country continues to be a worrying factor as this celebration of the 33rd anniversary bears no significance, in respect of a change in the situation, to us as young people, but as young people it is rather celebrated with our heads bowed down, shame written on our faces as we continue to witness democracy contributing immensely to the misery. We call this misery because the level of youth unemployment continues to escalate with young people being the most affected group. This is witnessed in the statistics that show unemployed young graduates who haven't even yet gotten the opportunity of ploughing back into their communities, despite the fact that as they were studying they were the investments of their families, their parents and their societies.
The Extended Public Works Programme and the government internships have become the most prominent measures of how government exploits young people, especially at local government level. With regard to the Extended Public Works Programme, it should be mentioned that it would be by luck if you found a young person having ascended to a foreman's position, as if this is the programme that the hon President was alluding to when talking about 500 000 jobs that will be created this year. It means, then, that an end to the current youth joblessness is still a dream perpetually to be deferred. We acknowledge, though, the good intention that was envisaged by the programme itself, but our emphasis is made in order to get the real sustainable job opportunities and also call for more citizen-focused interventions that are less frustrating and that give young people equal opportunities.
As a solution from Cope, we recommend that a youth cadet service, where school leavers serve and support communities while they continue to be empowered, should be offered and government should consider this. This will help in alleviating the roaming of youth who are neither employed nor attending school and the emphasis in this particular instance must be made because young people continue to suffer from the unemployment that is out there and the escalating statistics really indicate this.
The lack of universal access to qualitative education continues to subject young people to the unintended misfortune of finding themselves drowning in debts owed to sharks that pretend to be financial rescuing mechanisms for them to access education, yet they eventually get to be listed in credit bureaus before they are even employed.
To this effect, it must be mentioned that the NSFAS is amongst these giants who continue to swallow up the dreams, aspirations and future of young people. This scheme has left many casualties along the way. I must also mention that government is accountable for all this mess and it has continuously made promises it has never been able to keep. Young people have continuously been told of and promised free education, but our parents continue to suffer in giving us the education that our government is providing for us, because the quality of education itself leaves a lot to be desired.
Also, it must be emphasised that the state of our tertiary institutions is an issue of concern where we are calling on our Minister of Higher Education and Training to intervene, especially in making sure that these institutions are not used for any means of political point scoring. We have seen various institutions where various academics are under fire and some of them, including the University of South Africa, where you find that the SACP and its youth wing continue to draw young people to the streets for things that are really not education-related. [Applause.]
Again, it is on this matter that we would want to see both the Ministers of Education taking a firm stand against teachers in Soweto who have continuously held the future of our brothers and sisters to ransom by invading classes, jeopardising our learners by keeping them from writing their exams during a critical time to which they are supposed to be subjected in order to pass. [Applause.]
The aspirations of young people to become businessmen and women is often hindered by the fact that institutions that government has created are such that these services are accessed by certain spheres of society and not all our youth. To this effect, I would like to make mention of the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, Seda and ICD, who continue to shut out rural youth from the system that is used to get financial assistance in order for one to become a successful and sustainable entrepreneur. As a result of this, young people end up subjecting themselves to unwanted tendencies of fronting for the wealthy who seek to get wealthier, and the question that this must elicit is: What kind of government enjoys seeing its future leaders being prisoners of the haves?
The critical task of the National Youth Development Agency, among other things, will be to make sure that all these bottlenecks are dealt with and that economic freedom is enjoyed by the youth of this country across the rural divide, regardless of race or gender. The lack of service delivery that has been observed by the current government continues to be evident in areas which even the recent Christmas food parcels could not reach. [Applause.]
This is on the basis that roads have not been constructed and water, sanitation and electricity are not by any means in the pipeline. In this particular respect, I would like to make mention of a certain Xolobeni administrative area in the area of Bizana, Transkei in the Eastern Cape, where the previous Department of Minerals and Energy wanted to impose mining in an area where... Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Applause.]