South Africa could have a future as bright as the Christmas lights in Joburg CBD, but is wasting it away
Three weeks ago, two young boys were sent down a hole near Soweto to illegally mine for gold. Several days after they were supposed to resurface, their “grootman” went to check on them. It was his wife’s birthday, and he hoped the boys had brought up minerals he could quickly sell to buy her a present.
He never returned.
Another supervisor was sent, but he also did not return. As alarm spread across the community, police and neighbours approached the hole. They found the fumes from the chemicals used in mining operations to be too strong and couldn’t enter the area. The four were presumed dead. It has been more than two weeks now, and their bodies have still not been recovered.
We do not know much about the young boys, except that they were in their late teens or just a little older. When they were born, their mothers held them and wished for a bright future, not one of death in the dark. From the moment they stepped into the mine, they were another number in the countless who work beneath our feet. In death, they became just another faceless statistic.
A youth in free fall
Pens down and Dezemba celebrations may get us drunk, but what lies ahead for many young people, and by extension the country, must sober us.
The facts are alarming. Nearly two in three young people are unemployed at a time when they should be the next wave strengthening the economy. The population’s average age has been increasing every year, and the generation that was supposed to provide a workforce to help carry the economy is now instead carrying illicit minerals, illegal materials, or firearms.
In a world where fertility rates have dropped and populations are ageing, South Africa has not been exempt. We are above the minimum level needed to replace our population, but are creeping closer to it. The future of a smaller workforce supporting an ageing population is not a first-world problem; it is a glimpse of our future.
The time to beat the curse is running out, and grim trends suggest it may have already passed.
Solutions have been touted, incentives launched, partnerships formed, and the outcry heard, yet the problem persists.
The economy is on the rise, and this must be celebrated. But we must not be so intoxicated by this gain that we neglect what comes after.
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The harm starts much younger
The struggles of the young men and women caught in a cycle of desperation, crime, and hopelessness start much earlier than when they step into a mine.
Multi-level child poverty is prevalent across the country, and access to health and education remains a major hurdle.
A report by The Citizen this week detailed how children are often forced to stay with careless and negligent parents so they can get child care grants. It is a common case, experts say, of parents selfishly putting their own needs ahead of their children and harming them in the process.
Also this week, the Department of Basic Education revealed that with less than two months to go until schools reopen, 140 179 children have yet to be placed. With the potential impact quality education for each of these students may have on their communities and the country as a whole, missing out on school could be catastrophic.
This number will go down as we roll into 2026 and schools reopen, but even one child left out of the system is too much and continues the hopeless cycle we are in.
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Who are you?
Allowing children of foreign nationals into schools without proper documentation also poses a risk.
While human rights are important, the constitution guarantees their education, and exclusion would also cause social issues down the line; the system that allows it is built on sand.
Lack of proper documentation creates an identity crisis in the system that has been a fertile ground for nameless and faceless people, like Thabo Bester, to later move in the shadows and cause harm.
Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane described this last week when he said: “If you put a child with no documentation from Grade 1 to 8, they can change their name every year because we don’t have anything that can say who this child is.”
“It’s a problem, and it’s a threat to any state when you find yourself in that position.”
South Africa could have a future as bright as the Christmas lights in Joburg CBD, but the stats and the dead bodies beneath our feet suggest we are wasting it away.
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