A lot has been said in the media about the ongoing violent attacks on foreigners, described as ‘Xenophobia.’ However, in accordance with the elitist method of news making, adopted by almost all mainstream media outlets, which puts too much emphasis on ‘expert’ opinion, mainly petty bourgeois analysts and commentators have been invited on major talk shows to analyse the situation and suggest solutions. Of course, their views, while very narrow and shallow, vary vastly.

Some Pan Africanist ‘Azanians’ feel that ‘black consciousnesses’ could be the solution. Blacks are killing each other because of a colonial mentality, the argument goes. Many others have linked the attacks to the country’s socio-economic conditions. Typically, the analysis on the root cause of the country’s scandalous poverty fails to bring in the necessary structural element. Others, including the DA, have blamed it on, amongst others, our immigration policies and failure to ‘protect our borders.’

While all this discussion is going on, we are losing out on a wonderful opportunity to get to the bottom of the issue. Mainly, because, the people at the centre of all the violence, both the foreigners and the ‘xenophobic’ South Africans, are not part of the debate.

And, in true denialist South African style, the government has absolved itself from any responsibility and has vehemently condemned claims that this is as a result of frustration linked to poor service delivery.

Instead, going as far as attributing the chaos to a ‘third force’ and the IFP, they have vowed to bring to book the ‘hooligans’ and the ‘thugs’ that are behind the atrocious attacks. In the midst of this, as part of the ongoing struggle for power between Luthuli House and the Union Buildings, the new populist ANC leadership has contradicted the government and has linked the attacks to government’s ‘failures.’

The politicians, pundits and everyone else has spoken. But, strangely, the people at the centre of the dispute have not. None of the radio or television talk show hosts which have been discussing the matter for more than a week now have bothered getting the opinion of the people at the centre of the dispute. In newspaper columns, the usual columnists have written page long philosophical, sometimes abstract, analysis of the problem.

In Alexander for example, to get to the bottom of the problem, should the media not be attempting to secure the views and opinions of people who attended, or organised the meeting that decided foreigners should be driven out of the impoverished township? And, surely, in all the other areas where the violence has spread, there are ‘ringleaders.’ Should these people not be the ones at the centre of media discussion around the issue? Why are they attacking foreigners? Should we not be striving to hear it directly from the ‘horse’s mouth’? Has anyone in the press even attempted to locate the perpetrators?

Clearly, if we are to resolve many of the widespread socio-economic problems of the ‘new’ South Africa, there must be a departure from the current method of news gathering. For far too long, we have been listening to ‘intellectuals’ and to fat cat turkey necked cabinet ministers, very out of touch with reality, in their chauffer driven vehicles and designer outfits. And, given that many of the problems have remained and even worsened, most of their talk has proved nothing but ‘cheap’ and populist.

Is it not about time we listened to the people at the centre of the news whose desperate pleas to the government, in the last fourteen years, have fallen on deaf ears? Or are we too afraid what they might say may be too ‘politically incorrect’ and ‘counter revolutionary?”

June 16 marks the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising against apartheid rule. Percy Ngonyama writes that South Africa’s youth have faced an onslaught from market-friendly economic policies. Rather than a day of celebration, the anniversary should be used as a platform to re-launch and intensify young people's struggles for a genuine "Better life for all".

In the days leading up to the 30th anniversary of the June 16 Soweto uprising, young people have been urged by the government and the SA Youth Commission to take part in planned nationwide commemorations. The 2006 "apathetic" youth have been heavily criticised for their disregard of important national events.

While it is typical to assume that the Soweto uprising was triggered solely by the use of Afrikaans - widely seen by most black people as the language of the oppressors - as a medium of instruction, the youth of '76 took to the streets also to protest against inhumane living conditions in the townships and the racist policies of apartheid's 'bantu education', which subjected poor young black people to an inferior education system characterised by an inadequate supply of educational resources in black schools.

Thirty years on, and twelve years since the advent of the much talked about April 27 1994 'miracle', for many young people very little has changed, and as a result, there will be nothing to celebrate on June 16 2006.

The appalling socio-economic conditions in the townships have worsened. Youth unemployment has reached crisis level. For many young people who are HIV positive and poor, which is usually the case, there is no hope.

Because of government's strict fiscal discipline, and President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's dissident views on HIV/Aids, life saving anti retroviral drugs are only available to a fraction of infected persons at public medical institutions. We are yet to see a genuine 'roll-out' programme being implemented. And the disease continues its reign of terror, amongst the youth, unabated. Every day, more young people die from HIV/Aids compared to those who died on June 16, 1976.

The majority of black schools are still without basic necessities, such as electricity and water, let alone computer and science labs. Most public schools have had to drastically increase their admission fees to cope in the era of budget cuts. The shortage of resources at most public schools is so endemic that even the education minister has lost trust in her own system. Both her daughter and son have been enrolled at prestigious private schools.

While the brutal apartheid government was responsible for the plight of young people in 1976, the current government's ill-advised neo-liberal, market friendly, capitalist economic policies are to blame for the plight of the children of the 1976 youth.

Despite these serious predicaments facing our young people, the government has prioritised multi-billion dollar mega projects, such as the elitist Gautrain, the corrupt arms deal, the 2010 Soccer World Cup and the ecologically destructive Coega development project.

Faced with a serious unemployment catastrophe, the government has introduced the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP). This much-touted programme hopes to create 1 million jobs between 2004 and 2009. Thirty percent of these employment opportunities will be allocated to young people. However, the EPWP is marked by very serious shortcomings. The jobs are very temporary and pay next to slave wages. Furthermore, with only R25 billion allocated to the programme, the government needs to think again if it hopes to effectively address unemployment.

And given SA's huge apartheid induced services backlog, government would be well advised to embark on a massive recruitment drive of young people to build hospitals, clinics, schools, houses, roads, crèches, centres for abused and battered women, and other such urgently required infrastructure. Such a move could create a lot of decent employment opportunities for the youth.

Placing the crucial task of service delivery, as stipulated in the EPWP, in the hands of the private sector, will, as the past twelve years have brutally demonstrated, prove futile. Another initiative, The Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa), which, like the EPWP, also forms part of government's Accelerated And Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (asgiSA), in true capitalist style, puts the blame for the high rate of youth unemployment on the victims, the "unskilled" youth.

The reality, however, is that a large number of unemployed youth have post grade 12 qualifications. Some are even in possession of tertiary qualifications. Over a hundred thousand graduates are unemployed or underemployed. Clearly, the "skills" being "prioritised" by Jipsa are not people centred, but skills required by capital to increase profits and to achieve the ambitious 6% annual growth rate by 2014.

So called 'youth empowerment' programmes have not benefited the majority of young people, but a few who are aligned correctly politically. The appointment of ANC aligned young people to senior positions in government and the private sector has not improved the lives of the majority of young people. But, one can be certain that the newly 'empowered' young people have become filthy rich, thus joining the ranks of the black petty bourgeoisie who appear regularly on covers of fashion and financial publications, and are described as 'shinning examples' of 'success' that should be followed by all young people.

Eight million of the economically active population are unemployed - meaning they have no form of income. Seventy percent of these are young people. Given this sad situation, one need not be shocked by increasing incidents of criminal activities involving young people.

The government hopes to deal with the symptoms and not the causes. During his 2006 state of the nation address Thabo Mbeki announced a plan to increase resource allocation within the justice system to ensure, in his words, that "crime does not pay."

What are the causes of rampant poverty? This is a question government bureaucrats always prefer to avoid, for the answer lies in market-friendly policies that promote cuts in social expenditure and cuts in corporate tax. The post apartheid government has reduced corporate tax by 16%. One percent amounts to R2 billion. These funds are desperately needed to improve the lives of the country's young people and to create decent and sustainable employment opportunities.

Young people do not part-take in national events, not because of "apathy" as widely purported by politicians and mainstream youth formations, but because of disillusionment and very justified anger at SA's new rulers, who have abandoned the progressive principles of the 1956 Freedom Charter and slogans declaring "Socialism is the future, Build it now", and have become deaf to people's desperate pleas.

The only voice they ever listen to now is that of financially well-endowed capitalists and financial markets calling on them to implement more 'trade liberalisation'. As a result, they are endlessly running amok like headless chickens, formulating, courtesy of handsomely remunerated experts, one failed neo-liberal policy after another, at the expense of the poor masses.

HIV/Aids, unemployment, poverty and other problems affecting young people need to be put on top of government's agenda. For this to be realised, young people need to follow the recent example of the French youth who have united and successfully prevented the implementation of pro-business labour laws giving 'carte blanche' to bosses, after two years, to fire young people under the age of 26 without providing reasons. Our experience, past and present, also tells us that mass protest, and mass based campaigns, is the only 'language' governments and the capitalists understand.

Evidently, mainstream youth formations, such as the government bankrolled Youth Commission which continues to sing poetic praises for the state's ineffective and exclusive youth empowerment programmes, and the ANC Youth League – which has prioritised the 'Zuma for president' campaign and beauty contests, such as the annual Miss South Africa beauty pageant, over pressing youth issues, and counts amongst its 'comrades' the likes of the late Brett Kebble - are not the answer.

The '76 young generation did not lay down their lives for the current criminal neo-liberal 'paradise'. It is therefore a sign of indifference to the plight of many young people to commemorate the 30th anniversary of June 16 with yet another 'kwaito bash' at the Durban ABSA Stadium.

The anniversary should be used as a platform to re-launch and intensify young people's struggles for a genuine "Better life for all". A step in this direction is the 'Right to Work Campaign' [R2W] - a campaign that seeks to make unemployment 'public enemy number one' - which is being launched in Cape Town from June 13-16, at a conference to be addressed by various prominent national and international social-movement activists and trade unionists.

* Percy Ngonyama is a social-movement activist based in Durban ([email protected])

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

While I strongly believe that the likes of Charles Taylor should be brought to justice for their crimes, however the United Nations and the international community seems to be applying the law very arbitrarily.
 
Are we ever going to see George Bush, Tony Blair, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and other architects of the illegal oil war on Iraq, that, according to reputable estimates, has killed more than a hundred thousand Iraqis, also brought to book?
 
Furthermore, will the Israeli war criminals, such as Ariel Sharon, ever be brought  to justice for their crimes against defenceless Palestinians?

The recently held local government elections - held on March 01, 2006 - were neither an expression of the 'will' of the people nor a sign that 'our democracy is maturing' as Thabo Mbeki in collusion with the Independent Electoral commission [IEC] wants us to believe.

Instead, the elections should be viewed in the correct context: an unequivocal message to the ruling African National Congress [ANC] that the poor masses are 'gatvol'.

Unwittingly or wittingly, a substantial number of the electorate has rejected the top down neo-liberal policies that have exacerbated the country's poverty.

The government's apartheid era-style repressive response to civil society's organised 'election boycott' campaigns needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Just two days prior to the elections, the Durban City Council brutally attempted to prevent a legal march by the ever-growing movement of the shack dwellers 'Abahlali Base Mjondolo'.

Mainstream institutions and 'experts', who are always quick to remind us of how wonderful our 'democracy' is, are yet to condemn this horrific action and police repression in Khutsong, which, for many, undoubtedly, brought back memories of the 1980's, and the notorious 'State of Emergency'.

Despite the IEC's ambitious and extravagant 'Power of X' media campaign, less than 48% of the registered 22 million voters cast their vote. Of these, less than 11 million voted ANC. A large number did not even bother to register.

It is therefore puzzling that the ANC is "humbled" and "grateful" of this embarrassing situation.

What the ANC and government should be asking is why is the South African electorate so disillusioned with the electoral process, only twelve years since the first democratic election in 1994.

In the days leading up to the election, the public was bombarded with numerous clearly well calculated news items of how effectively government was 'delivering' on services. The evening news increasingly broadcast reports on government ministers and officials officially opening schools or clinics in indigent parts of the country.

'Kingpins' of this propaganda project should be made aware that there is absolutely nothing special with Manto Tshabalala Msimang opening a new clinic in KwaZulu-Natal or Naledi Pandoor opening a school in some rural area. It is simply their job for which they are handsomely remunerated.

And access to adequate education and health care are constitutionally guaranteed basic rights which, even after twelve years of so-called democracy, remain elusive for the majority.

The elections were also a further indictment to opposition parties, who had, in the midst of electioneering, portrayed themselves as an 'alternative' to the ANC, and pledged to fight corruption and poverty. Their failure to acknowledge that it is the top down capitalist policies of the ruling party that breed corruption and poverty grossly undermined their claims.

Whilst most progressive formations might be discouraged by the ANC's 66% victory, there is certainly an indication that the level of dissatisfaction with the current 'developmental' agenda is growing.

There is an urgent need to educate the poors on alternatives to neo-liberalism. The masses need to be made aware that there are alternatives to the current 'criminal' systerm that forces many to steal, lie, cheat, and even sell their bodies to survive.

Indeed, a systerm that seeks to commodify every aspects of our lives, with dire consequences for the poorest of the poor, must be condemned and fought with the same amount of vigour and rage that characterised the struggle against apartheid.

Thabo Mbeki's neo-liberal state of the nation address, while re-committing South Africa to market-friendly economic policies, failed to outline specific programmes to meaningfully deal with the country's worsening poverty and underdevelopment. The 'have-nots', who have suffered severely in the last ten years as a result of conservative economic policies, should therefore brace themselves for more hardship.

It is very hypocritical for parliament to have chosen the theme "All shall have equal rights"- derived from the Freedom Charter - given the sad reality that the annual opening of parliament and parliament itself are a very good reflection of growing inequalities between the rich and the poor.

The annual event has become a Hollywood-style fashion extravaganza. The SABC's fashion commentator skilfully scrutinized numerous trendy outfits worn by the elite.

Despite SA's worsening levels of poverty and inequalities, Mbeki, as a result of recent surveys, is very optimistic and hopeful that the economic policies are taking the country in the right direction. Unfortunately, reality on the ground paints a very gloomy picture.

As widely expected, economic growth and government's 'Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative' (ASGISA), featured prominently. This, and other government's neo-liberal initiatives, have seen South Africa's ruling politicians, 'prostituting' themselves to the financially well endowed corporations and the markets that they control in an attempt to attract the much craved foreign investment, with dire consequences for the masses.

ASGISA sees increased exports as fundamental for economic growth and the projected six percent annual growth rate in the next few years. However, in recent years, the country has managed to drastically increase its exports, but this has come at a heavy price for the working class. While output growth has increased, employment growth has declined in major sectors, such as manufacturing, business services, agriculture and mining.

As the Cape Town based Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) points out, export oriented growth also means increased competition which, in many instances, has meant cost reduction which leads to unsafe working conditions, retrenchments and cutting of working hours and wages.

At the expense of the poor, the ANC government has put too much reliance on the private sector. The problem with this however, is that the private sector's primary aim is to increase profitability. Private companies are not accountable to anyone but shareholders. South Africa, with its heavy apartheid induced services backlog, cannot afford this situation.

Upcoming celebrations on June 16 and August 09 marking the 30th anniversary of the Soweto youth uprising and the 50th anniversary of the women's march to the Union buildings, respectively, mean very little for the majority of women and youth who, as a result of government's policies, are confronted with extreme poverty on a daily basis.

It is estimated that 70% of the unemployed are young people. Most have never worked in their life. Only about 14% of those graduating from tertiary institutions, each year find secure employment in the formal economy. Yet, none of our so-called 'experts' see the connection between this hopeless situation and youth involvement in crime, survival sex, substance abuse, etc.

Instead, in true South African-style, the government plans to deal with the symptoms and not the causes. Mbeki mentioned a plan to improve resource allocation within the justice systerm to ensure that "crime does not pay". The fact that a large majority of those overcrowding our prisons are arrested for what most sociologists view as "poverty related" crimes is immaterial.

Because of government's strict fiscal discipline, and Mbeki and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's AIDS denial, the life saving anti retroviral drugs are only available to a fraction of infected persons - mostly women and youth - at government hospitals. Only about a hundred thousand of about six million HIV/AIDS patients are on anti retroviral medicine at public institutions.

Is it therefore not an insult and insensitive for Mbeki to suggest that we should be proud of this horrific situation?

Opposition parties, who have, in the backdrop of electioneering for the March 01 local government elections, portrayed themselves as an 'alternative' to the ANC, whilst having raised a few minor misgivings about Mbeki's speech, are in full agreement with the overall anti-poor capitalist agenda.

The failure to acknowledge that it is the top down capitalist policies of the ruling party that breed corruption and poverty, give the lie to their claims.

Certainly, there is an urgent need to conduct an intensive nationwide debate of government's economic policies that have rendered freedom and democracy enigmatic for many South Africans.

Is it not the right time then to demand an end to privatisation and outsourcing? Was the struggle against apartheid also not about decent and secure jobs? With more than eight million of the economically active population unemployed, should we not be demanding urgent steps to curb the unemployment virus?