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Conference Chairperson
Distinguished guests
Conference delegates

President Thabo Mbeki, addressing a youth gathering sometime in April this year said, "Our nation owes a permanent debt to our youth". This statement is very fundamental particularly when we try to define and locate the role of youth in the current process of transformation in the country.

The topic of civil society is a most interesting one and a lot can be discussed around it, but what would be our conception of the concept of civil society and its relationship to the role of youth in our society.

In terms of the South African political arena, the concept of civil society has come to be interchangeably used with the concept like organs of people's power. The concept of people's power was more appealing due to the fact it called for direct engagement in influencing the state (as an organ of people's power). In a sense people's formations played a catalyst role in the pursuit of a national goal in the quest for a better life for all. The other important emphasis of this was the fact that it encouraged an all-round building of mass youth formations.

Accordingly mass sectoral organisations of youth and student became the critical component of this movement.

This year, 2001, South Africa will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings of 1976. It is at this time the youth of our country continue to provide a reply, through programme development, to the call for a new patriotism, which asks the question, " what have I contributed to the solution of the problems that face our country?"

Young people of our country have come to the realisation that the advent of democracy in 1994 did not mean an abrupt end to the problems of the past. It meant the beginning of a process of rebuilding our country, particularly previously disadvantaged communities.

Our country experiences a situation where young people are caught in the cycle of poverty, unemployment, crime etc, due to the improper system of education of the past that today rejects their participation in the economic development of our country. We have sections of our society that continue to stigmatise young people, which at times makes young feel rejected by their own communities.

At this point we wish to hail the South African Youth Council, despite the challenges it is faced with, who have tirelessly worked with the National Youth Commission and other progressive forces of the world, in an attempt to bring about visible change to the contribution young South Africans can make in the transformation of our country.

Occupying the psyche of young people today should be how we aggressively confront developmental challenges facing us as young South Africans in the quest to create a better life for all of our people.

As young people our aim should be to achieve that point of contact: the delivery of services to the masses of the people and this is what young people have been doing in some of the provinces.

Let us take the National Youth Service Programme pilot projects which have been conducted in three provinces, namely, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Province. The first intake drew 420 young people who heeded the call by the NYC, the Department of Public Works and the Office of the Status of the Disabled Persons in the Presidency.

The project, called Youth for Environmental Accessibility (Y4EA), is funded by the Department of Public Works to the amount R50million. The primary purpose of the NYS is to enhance the employability of young people, by providing them with skills, while developing previously disadvantaged communities.

The completed phase serves to lay the basis for the development of legislation to launch a fully-fledged National Youth Service Programme. The NYC is proud to announce that this piece of legislation is currently with the Minister in the Presidency, Dr Essop Pahad, who will be tabling it at the Cabinet before the end of this year.

Young people from the communities mentioned above received technical training while executing the required modifications to public buildings. The acquired skills include bricklaying, carpentry, plastering and tiling, painting, plumbing, road construction and paving, as well as carport construction. The technical training was complemented with life-skills training to allow young people to recognise and realise their potential.

As the project came to a close 267 projects had been completed. The facilities comprised improving the access to government buildings for disabled people in the form of construction of parking areas for the disabled, ramps into the buildings as well as toilets for the disabled people.

The 267 projects included modifications to 20 colleges, 36 courts of law, 25 hospitals and clinics, 47 police stations, 92 schools and 47 other government buildings. This totals to 95 projects in the Eastern Cape, 48 in KwaZulu-Natal and 124 in the Northern Province.

In all of the above projects, which were diligently managed by the Independent Development Trust (ITD), young people participated voluntarily while receiving a stipend of only R35 per day.

All these efforts are carried out to ensure that the role of young people in the civil society movement, that seeks address the needs of the previously disadvantaged communities, grows.

The role of young people in civil society should aim at building a movement for the training and education of young revolutionary democrats whose task is to continue the process of the fundamental social transformation of our country in favour of the millions of ordinary people, both black and white.

The civil society movement should be part of the home of the most developed and disciplined revolutionary democrats of our country.

It is when programmes that seek to meet the above objectives are up and running that the youth fraternity will not only regard these structures as mere organs of civil society as understood in developed democracies but as organs of people's power in pursuit of a better life for all. In the ongoing call for recognition of the beautiful work done by young people, the youth development fraternity is of the firm view that as long as the quality of life becomes better day-by-day, our people who have been denied access to some of these basic services will recognise the fact that our country is really changing for the better.

The challenge that lies ahead of civil society organisations is on the development of mechanisms on the eradication of the ills of the past. Challenges that face our country demand that every young South African must be part of the national reconstruction effort.

Young people must be of service to the growing needs of our nation.

Challenges facing our country demand that we all develop programmes that seek to eliminate economic disparities and social inequalities that are a source of rage that could reach uncontrollable proportions if not attended to now.

Differences in terms of economic development between our country and the West demand that as South African youth we define what we mean by civil society in a country that faces problems like ours. As civil society organisations we need to craft and pursue a developmental agenda that seeks to address the material underdevelopment of our people and communities.

Since 1994, the government has taken a leading role in ensuring youth participate in the reconstruction and development of our country, through the development of integrated programmes which are a national response to both urban and rural poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment in our country.

In the pilot project mentioned above, Y4EA of the National Youth Service Programme, the NYC has, in partnership with the Department of Public Works and the IDT, a civil society organisation, worked very closely with community based youth-formations in delivering services to the disabled persons of our country.

Young people have mobilised themselves through youth formations to ensure that this project becomes a success.

The Youth Commission acknowledges the fact that some youth civil society organisations find themselves frustrated by the lack of clear policy and connecting points with government in general, and ambiguous and differing government responses to their work and plight. This is the challenge we must find a solution for.

We take a cue from experience that civil society organisations are indispensable to effectively promote sustainable developments.

It has also been observed in our country that some NGOs have exhibited anti-state attitudes, which are mainly rooted in ideology rather than experience. Such differences become unhealthy when both the state and NGOs fail to deliver services to the masses.

There is a prevailing understanding in most parts of the world that NGOs are better placed, as they are closer to communities to deliver services than the state. Research also reveals that community participation in the development of programmes has more positive spin-offs than top-down approach. The question we need to ask ourselves as youth formations is how do we capitalise on these findings to develop our communities. One of the challenges that young South Africans grapple with is racism. Our past has stampeded young black South Africans, particularly young Africans, to the bottom of the economic ladder of our society. Hence the debate on racism must be on the agenda for the next ten years and beyond.

Recently we witnessed the reported alleged racist murder of a 19 year-old youth, Tsepo Matloga, in the Northern Province. The Premier of that Province, Dr Ngoako Ramathlodi, called for mass mobilisation against racism on a scale never seen before. As young people of South Africa we support that call, as it will positively take us towards the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) to be held in Durban in August - September 2001.

Programmatic engagement of youth civil society organisations in the pre- and post-conference activities, as the South African Association of Youth Clubs, has been mandated to lead this process, would see to it that youth NGOs and CBOs do really transcend the status of being organs of civil society to organs of people's power.

At this juncture I wish to make three key observations: Firstly, with reference to the leadership of young people in the civil society, we remain of the view that organised youth formations that have continually championed the course of young people towards our country's democracy and beyond, should continue playing that fundamental role. When new challenges emerge, they should not abdicate their responsibility just because we now have a democratically elected government where some of our leaders are deployed. Secondly, we need to work towards consolidating a process that will lead to revitalising structures that will be charged with the responsibility of co-ordinating youth development formations activities outside government.

Thirdly, the advent of democracy and the magnitude of problems that face our country, both at the socio-economic and political levels, demand that we welcome all contributions coming both from organised formations and individuals, especially when addressed within the context of existing structures.

In conclusion, as youth civil society delegates at this conference, we need to set ourselves some targets in terms of what contribution we want to make in the national quest for a better life. The following have been firmly put on the national youth agenda:

a) The fight against racism, sexism, xenophobia, tribalism and all forms of discrimination
b) Actively participate in the political and socio-economic development,
c) Uphold the democratic values enshrined in the Constitution,
d) Work for a society that respects human dignity,
e) Alleviate poverty and fight for and peaceful settlement of disputes, and
f).Unite South African people, both black and white.

I thank you.

Issued by National Youth Commission

24 April 2001