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June is a month abundant with activities targeted at young people in South Africa.
The month commemorates the 1976 riots, but it has its traditions in the history of the liberation for the African continent as a whole.
In 1961, Tanzania’s Mwalimu Julius Nyerere delivered a speech at the opening of the World Assembly of Youth seminar in Dar es Salaam.
In the speech he said: “Africa is a young continent. It is young in two respects. Internationally, its nations are young nations; but Africa is also young in another sense – it is governed by young people.”
The youth in the ’50s and ’60s set themselves the task to achieve total liberation from colonial rule.
However, Nyerere threw caution to the question of African unity as central to the total liberation and ultimate claim to economic and social wellbeing.
Thus he says “in the second scramble of Africa one nation is going to be divided against another nation to make it easier to control Africa by making her weak and divided against itself”.
In the wake of the Africa Rising narrative being challenged by rating agencies and economies battling with elicit financial flows, the lack of a fast pace approach to regional economic integration and subsequent unity of the whole continent will weaken South Africa against other more powerful countries.
This will give way to the second scramble, which Nyerere describes as:
“One Imperialist power is going to arm one African nation, and another imperialist power is going to arm another African nation; and African brother is going to slaughter African brother – not in the interest of Africa, but in the interest of the imperialist, both old and new.”
The African Union Youth Division website indicates that about 65% of the total population of Africa is below the age of 35 years, and more than 35% is between the ages of 15 and 35 years – making Africa the most youthful continent.
By 2020, it is projected that out of four people, three will be, on average, 20 years old.
Therefore South African youth should indeed reflect on the deepening need to fast-track this unity of the African continent, because there lies our power.
We need to find a balance between market forces and strong and accountable developmental states and renewable energy certificates to drive infrastructure, the provision of social services, industrialisation and economic integration.
This takes us to the United Nations’ Agenda 2063, a strategic framework for the socioeconomic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.
Agenda 2063 by CityPress on Scribd
The guiding vision for Agenda 2063 is the AU Vision of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in international arena.”
My proposal is that Agenda 2063 is a living document for the youth to take forward and advance and South Africa as leading regional economy should indeed prepare to lead.
For the ultimate goal of African Unity, the youth must consciously affirm their role to guard against the second scramble of Africa.
• Reitumetse Rapulane is a social activist and director of Lesedi la kgale enterprise
