Theme:
20 years into democracy
The year 2014 has been symbolic for South Africa as
it marks a crucial point within the history of democracy in the country. Millions of South Africans were looking
forward to cast their votes and express themselves through a political party of
their choice. Some were looking forward
to vote for the first time yet for some voting has always been a sense of pride
since 1994.
However due to the rising need and demands that
would face any other developed country, South Africa also has its fair share of
shortfalls and loop holes which have been contributing towards the constantly
escalating rate of dissatisfaction amongst South African youth.
An issue such as unemployment, amongst others, has been
a dominating challenge over the years and therefore has been exploited by most
political parties in order to attract more votes from young people. As it is an undisputable fact that from a
daily basis young people are faced with challenges of unemployment.
Prior the approach of the glorious moment that the
country has been waiting for-of commemorating two decades since the birth of
democracy and unfortunately in the absence of Madiba. I took the time to chat to a few young people
on social media (Facebook).
The feedback that I received compelled me under the
impression that most young people are not happy at all with the state of South
Africa in terms of employment opportunities.
90% of them blame the government by not stretching its arm wide enough
in order to decrease poverty through creating more employment
opportunities. They feel that there is
still a long way to go before the country could have enough reason to
celebrate.
A young and “inconvenient” youth, Julius Malema is
part of the circle of young people who have been fighting the ends of black
poverty and struggle. When Malema’s rosy
days within the ANCYL turned gloomy, he took many by surprise when he
formulated his Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party. One of the visions he had within his
political party is that he would create job opportunities for young
people. There were ambivalent emotions
behind his intentions due to his ugly past within the African National Congress
(ANC). Hence I discovered that there
were those who feel that Malema does not deserve a seat in Parliament.
However working on this assignment has been an eye
opener to me because I discovered other people’s heartfelt comments and
thoughts. It was quite challenging to be
able to come up with a most accurate angle for my story so I opted to ask a
general question which I believe was comfortable enough for everyone to be able
to respond to.
Moreover next time I would like to improve on my
crowdsourcing skill because I don’t trust it is sharp enough. The quantity of people who responded was
quite poor so I realised that if I conduct my message better next time, the
response can also be great.
