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Michael Mhlanga
Given the confidence loaded in the preface of the National Youth Policy Preface, reflecting on the Youth Indaba whose outcome we yearn to see, albeit saddened by callous ravages of Cyclone Idai in the Eastern highlands, and troubled by the past week’s geo-graphing of sexuality and commercialisation of it, mainly positing that the main actors in homosexuality are youths and the stalled question: What is the problem affecting the youth in the country?
I hasten to state that perhaps answers, or lack of them, are lying in the National Youth Policy and how Government can enhance its usefulness and I decided to use its preface to ignite a debate on identifying the problem affecting the youth, the causal effects and the actors inducing the “Youth problem.”
The preface of the National Youth Policy re-launched in 2013 after the discontent of the 2000 version is apt on that the National Youth Policy was developed as a framework to provide common aspirations and priorities for youth development across Zimbabwe. It categorically opines that through the National Youth Policy, the Government declares the importance of the active involvement of young people in national development, demonstrating the distinctive and complementary roles of all Government Ministries, the Non-Government Sector and Youth Groups in youth development by providing a framework with common goals for development and promoting a spirit of co-operation and co-ordination.
After reading such a comforting preface of a very important document and attempting to answer the millennium question: What exactly is the problem affecting youth in Zimbabwe? I still shudder to think that the answer is absent in spheres of academia, politics and even religion. You would agree with me that should you try to listen to responses to these three, the discord on what exactly is the problem would drain your spirits. Academia alone will never agree, not because academia is designed not to agree, but because in the space we live in, academics has become highly polarised. On the other side, religion would perhaps remind us that youth are suffering because of their “Gommorite” behaviour, let’s not even think of politics, its answers are everyday exhibits, that is why we have to substitute it for a moment in any attempt to undress the past that has lodged us in this quagmire.
A revision of the National Youth Policy reports that the Policy seeks to ensure that all young women and men are given meaningful opportunities to reach their full potential, both as individuals and as active participants in society. Again, a central question, how far are we in responding to that? The debilitating issue is on the inadequacies of governance and youth issues. Youth should not be treated as beneficiaries of the state’s benevolence or an after-thought but important citizens in state making and administration.
In a country where youth are the largest group, youth and governance can hardly fail to be a key issue. In a range of societies; political or religious moving at differing rates towards some measure of democracy, public participation and civic engagement and the like, it will be increasingly difficult, and counter-productive as well, to ignore this majority, or other large groups when assessing the problems and needs of governance. At best, recognition of the group has only in instances of pleading for voter mobilisation or rally attendees; and nothing more beyond elections or rally preparations. The experience of a typical Zimbabwean youth is one of instability and uncertainty, exacerbated by war, displacement, economic crisis and the HIV/ Aids pandemic. They are part of a socio-political category that emerged from the collapse of traditional societies under the impacts of colonialism and the post-colonial mobilisation of young people for a range of power struggles in which they have often been the major victims. Others are gripped by despair and a sense that there is no future for them — at least in their spaces of influence or knowledge — an attitude that for some contributes to a fatalistic refusal to take the trouble to protect themselves against HIV/ Aids and for others to throw themselves into desperate, costly, and often dangerous attempts at illegal immigration to more developed, or at least, richer countries outside the continent, in search of employment.
Both those demanding change and those seeking to defend the existing order, seek to mobilise young people to their side. This makes the vital problems of youth, their role in governance, their struggle for a livelihood, and the overwhelming threat of HIV/Aids, key issues for governance in Zimbabwe. Politics needs to find solutions for this youthful majority of their populations, that is rapidly growing larger, poorer, more discontented, and occasionally, more militant.
Reading deeper into the National Youth Policy, you will understand that the policy intends to address the major concerns and issues critical to young men and women and gives direction to youth programmes and services provided by government and non-government organisations. From the preface again, I picked that Zimbabwean society as a whole will benefit through the implementation of the National Youth Policy by placing young people as central to all development initiatives and the National Youth Policy recognises and values young women and men as a key resource and national asset and highlights the importance of youth development to nation building and the creation of a democratic, productive and equitable society.
Again are we there yet?
Analysts have always argued that political fortunes for any party lie in the youth bulge which is deterred from democratic processes by numerous reasons. Some among many have been abject disenfranchisement through disparaging unemployment, infuriating un-made promises, misinformation, and absence of provable incentives for voting or political involvement, adultism and disappointingly objectification of young people within political spaces. This has grown to be a tired discursive explanation and it still hasn’t changed. The youth in Zimbabwe represent an important constituency for mobilisation by political parties and senior politicians because the majority are currently regarded as a critical currency worth competing over. Because of this perception the youth become the target of political party mobilisation campaigns and of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that are interested in shaping futuristic narratives with the anticipation of creating a better country.
The protracted political and economic crisis affecting Zimbabwe for more than a generation has left many of the youth frustrated and disillusioned. They see little hope for the future through education or sustainable employment. At the same time they have little voice in governance and politics. Most political systems condescend to young people, relegating their concerns to the margins of debate and bracketing them exclusively with such issues as school and sports. But the challenges however, are significantly greater yet the National Youth Policy explicitly articulates that, then what are we missing?
Failure to adequately address this challenge, and the failure of Zimbabwean political and economic systems to provide for the young, has contributed to governance crises in this country. They tend to ignore the real challenges of youth and governance, particularly as concerns listening to the views and experiences of Zimbabwe’s young people and integrating them into politics and governance processes. This leads to missing the opportunity to address or avert causes of governance crises through the active engagement of young people. With the Youth Indaba come and gone, all we hope is a change to redressing the problem affecting young people in Zimbabwe. A conversation like the Youth Indaba may be a right step in the right direction, but as long as there is no intellectual and political commitment to the solutions, then we are not doing anything. The reality is that the special challenges of Zimbabwe’s development and political renewal demand a high level of political energy, which can only be found through the mobilisation of the young. If young people are provided channels to develop and express their issues and pursue their special needs within existing systems and frameworks, they may contribute positively to the enhancement and stability of those systems.
The need is to bring a set of young peoples’ issues to the political and governance agenda and to make governance issues accessible and relevant to young people. At present, few have concrete ideas about how to address youth and governance from the perspectives of the young. This shows the need for exploratory work on the issue, to identify those perspectives and examine governance issues of particular relevance to youth, in the context of youth perspectives.
Online Reporter