This Youth Day marks 50 years since the school children of Soweto were met with deadly police force for marching against Bantu Education. They were demanding a different future, and the promise made back to them, renewed at democracy, was that young people are this country’s future and would be invested in as such.

Yet, according to Youth Capital, a campaign fighting youth unemployment, that promise has only been partly fulfilled.

According to Buhlebethu Magwaza, Youth Capital project lead, the latest General Household Survey points to gains in educational attainment, with the share of adults holding at least a matric qualification increasing from 30.5% in 2002 to 52.9% in 2025.

However, the labour market presents a different picture, he says.

“Nearly six in 10 people aged 24 (58.1%) are not in employment, education or training. Overall, almost four million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 fall into this category. When the 25 to 34 age group is included, the number climbs to nearly 10 million.”

Struggle to access opportunities

Despite these challenges, Magwaza says young people have held up their end.

“Young people are carrying significant responsibilities, facing economic hardship and struggling to access opportunities. The policy challenge, then, is how to create pathways through those barriers.

“Public employment programmes remain among the few interventions capable of meeting young people where they are and at the scale the crisis requires.

“They do far more than create temporary work opportunities: They provide young people with work experience, a source of income, and access to an ecosystem of support, relationships and opportunities that can propel them towards longer-term livelihoods and economic participation,” he says.

These programmes also help close critical gaps in the social fabric by responding to needs that would otherwise go unmet in communities.

The Basic Education Employment Initiative is the clearest example. “In 2025, it provided almost 200 000 young people with valuable work experience while strengthening schools, supporting teachers and learners, and improving literacy and learning outcomes.

“In this way, every rand invested delivered benefits not only for participants but also for communities and public services. Yet, at precisely the moment evidence points to a need for expansion, the programme has been wound down,” says Magwaza.

Employment creation

“In a labour market moving in the wrong direction, the decision to retreat from one of the country’s largest youth employment interventions is difficult to reconcile with the government’s stated commitment to employment creation,” says Magwaza.

He adds that South Africa shed 345 000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026 alone, with more than half of those losses occurring in community and social services, the sector in which many public employment opportunities are concentrated.

“In the recently tabled 2026 Budget Votes, there was remarkable agreement about the scale of youth unemployment.

“South Africa has spent years diagnosing the crisis. When presenting their departmental budget votes, the president described job creation as one of government’s foremost priorities.”

Government’s reaction

The Minister of Employment and Labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, characterised South Africa’s unemployment challenge as a ‘missing jobs crisis’.

The Minister of Small Business Development, Stella Tembisa Ndabeni, argued that political freedom must increasingly translate into economic freedom, particularly for young people and women. The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities continues to position youth economic participation as central to its mandate.

Youth Capital agrees. However, the organisation argues that young people cannot build futures out of speeches.

“Fifty years ago, young people put their lives on the line for the promise of a real education and a real future.

“This Youth Day, the most honest thing we can say is that the promise is only half-kept. Young people are qualifying in record numbers, they are running households, and they are ready. Yet the pathways into work, livelihoods and economic participation remain far too narrow for the scale of the need,” says Magwaza.

He adds that you cannot keep telling a generation that they are the future and then refuse to invest in them.

“Honouring 1976 means backing that promise with a budget, this year of all years.”

Year of action

Ahead of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, Youth Capital is calling on the government to match the language of a ‘year of action’ rhetoric with at least a single commitment that would prove it: A ring-fenced, multi-year public employment budget that guarantees at least one million funded opportunities for young people every year. Today, action has to mean more than commemoration.

Young people don’t need promises

“If youth unemployment is the defining challenge of our generation, then it must become one of the defining priorities of our country’s budget. It must shape spending decisions. It must influence what gets protected when resources are scarce. And it must be reflected in the scale of investment directed towards livelihoods and employment opportunities for young people,” says Magwaza.

“This Youth Day, commemoration is not the test; investment is. Young people do not need another promise; they need to see that the country’s budgets, policies and priorities reflect the future they have repeatedly been told belongs to them. The national budget is where the country keeps its word!”

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