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 Mbuyisa Makhubo was the young man pictured carrying Hector Peterson’s body in the photograph by Sam Nzima that went around the world revealing the brutality of the Apartheid state. Mbuyisa was pursued by the police in the days that followed and eventually disappeared without the Makhubo family ever knowing the truth of what happened to Mbuyisa to this day. 

During the visit, the Makhubo family conveyed their dismay of the state of unemployment that faces young people in South Africa today and how this betrays the memory and the sacrifice of those who stood up in 1976. The family particularly lamented how economic opportunity has become patronage issued by the ANC to those who are connected. The Makhubo family pledged their support behind ActionSA fully for the 2024 national and provincial elections.

Youth Day in 2022 is no longer what it meant in the early days of our democracy. Hope has given way to crushing unemployment, poor education, and futures without opportunity. We cannot deny these realities, but we must not become prisoners to these realities either. 

ActionSA is making inroads in the youth of South Africa. The average age of our party’s membership is under 40 years old. We are an organisation that is appealing to young people, including on university and TVET campuses where ActionSA has won at least 7 SRC Presidencies this year so far. 

Of greatest important is how we plan to serve young people in our efforts to create a country bursting with opportunity. 

Central to these plans must be the complete overhaul of our education system so that young people are emerging into a job market with the skills and education that makes them suitable to a growing pool of opportunity. We must invest strongly in raising a generation of entrepreneurs and small business owners who can become employers of others and hubs of economic activity. 

We must ensure that communities have access to decent quality sporting and cultural facilities because young people need to find expression of their skills, teamwork and creativity that keep them away from drugs and gangs. 

ActionSA understands that its mission is to spread a message of hope to the millions of young people who have given up on a failed political system that has failed them. This message will convey the hope that a failed ANC government can be retired to the old age home of our history and replaced by a new agenda that serves young people and their futures. 

This must be a commitment that lats for more than must the one day in which we mark the memory of those who sacrificed so much in 1976, it must be a commitment that is our daily work to ensure that young people in South Africa grow up in a better country in which they can access opportunity.

Issued by ActionSA