COSATU statement for Youth Day - 2007 16-06-07

 

COSATU statement for Youth Day 2007

The Congress of South African Trade Unions salutes the youth of South Africa on this Youth Day, June 16th 2007.

What first motivated the historic youth uprising that started on 16 June 1976 must never be forgotten. It was far more than a mere rejection of Afrikaans-medium tuition; it represented a determination to "seize the time" for education, and to change the entire history of South Africa and the world. It played a decisive part in sweeping away the apartheid superstructure less than two decades later. It was a world event of the first magnitude.

COSATU recognises no such thing as a "lost generation", now or in the past. The 1976 generation was a hero generation, no less than the earlier generation of Tambo and Lambede that founded the ANC Youth League and went on to transform the ANC itself. And the 1976 generation has been followed by further hero generations, each one in turn bravely taking up the revolutionary tasks of its day.

COSATU, alongside its allies the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and the Young Communist League (YCL), is a home for the youth. The liberation struggle is not only for people whose youth is behind them. Trade unions have no choice but to fight for the demands of youth - for jobs, for dignity, for culture, and for justice, because the youth of today are our future.

Since 1999 COSATU's central campaign has been the Jobs and Poverty Campaign. To take this campaign forward, we have organised a Jobs and Poverty Campaign Conference, commencing two days after Youth Day, on 18-19 June 2007, at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Boksburg, Ekurhuleni, at which the youth will be fully represented.

Business, government and the media constantly tell us that the "economic fundamentals" are in place, and that the economy is "booming". We are told that inflation is being controlled. But for whose benefit?

None of it is of any use so long as the youth of the country face the hopelessness and alienation of unemployment, which affects youth more then any other section of society. Unemployment demoralises young people; it crushes their aspirations for a better future; it lowers their self-respect. It must be ended as a matter of the highest priority. COSATU rejects government economic policies that fail to place youth employment as the absolute priority and measure of success and failure.

And what we see now in this regard is failure. Despite the major advances the youth have achieved since 1994, especially in the field of human rights and equal opportunities, the capitalist economic system and neoliberal economic policies continue to deny the youth the fruits of their political liberation. So long as we have massive levels of youth unemployment and the consequent poverty and lack of opportunity, the youth cannot be truly free. It is the mission of today's generation to change all this. That means socialism - in our lifetime!

In this year of 2007 we honour the memory of the late youth President of African liberation, Thomas Sankara, who became President of Burkina Faso in 1983, at the age of only 33 years.

Sankara was cruelly killed in August 1987 in a neo-liberal coup d'état. The 20th anniversary of his tragic death will be honoured around the world and especially in Africa. This young man's words will live forever, and deserve repeating on this occasion: "Power must be conquered by a conscious people"

It is the special task of the ANCYL and the YCL, working with COSATU, to raise the political consciousness of this generation of youth so that they can fulfil their historic duty to conquer power, and as Sankara said: "We must dare to invent the future".

Only a fully, politically conscious people will be able to do that. The youth of Soweto already knew in 1976 what Thomas Sankara later wrote: that only a conscious people can possibly win back what is rightfully theirs.

COSATU is part of the youth, and the youth is part of COSATU. We are going to win this one, together.