Stay focused, mayor urges youth
Johannesburg executive mayor Mpho Parks Tau has urged the post freedom youth to stay focused and away from drugs and other mischief.

He was unveiling a plague at Realogile High School in the memory of the 16 June 1976 Student Uprising, which saw many students gunned down and hundreds injured and maimed by the apartheid police in their brutal response to a peaceful march against Bantu Education and the introduction of Afrikaans as the sole medium of instruction at schools.
Tau said the post democracy youth should use the freedom brought by their 1976 predecessors to good use by continuing where they left off in the fight for better education.
“Now that democracy has been attained, the fight should now shift more and more towards the attention to your books and education as whole. This is what the June 16 students paid the ultimate price for, that you, the future youth should live in a better country with more educational opportunities for all.
“South Africa has a serious skills shortage and an unbelievable chunk of our youth remain unskilled and therefore unemployable. You should not depend on government grants.
“When the youth cry foul about unemployment, we should ask them what skills they posses,” Tau said at the unveiling which was attended by Obed Bapela, Alex resident and 1976 student leader and now Minister in the Presidency.
“In this way, those who lost their lives or were scared for life by the brutal apartheid police will realise they did not die or were not maimed in vain. They died for our freedom and freedom is not just casting your vote every five years but it is about what contribution you are making to the economic growth and prosperity of our nation.
“We say to the youth of today, in you lies our hope. You have the opportunity to access education without any inhibitions. There is no concrete ceiling but a glass one which you can easily break in your quest for education,” Tau said.
Before the unveiling, veterans of the 1976 uprising marched through the streets of Alexandra, tracing the footsteps of their march in that fateful year.