Deputy President Paul Mashatile Delivers Keynote Address at Youth Day Commemorations

In this year’s Youth Day Commemoration Event at the North West University’s Rag Farm Stadium, the former Minister of Arts and Culture and current Deputy President of South Africa, Paul Mashatile, stood in place of President Cyril Ramaphosa to address the issues, particularly the staggering unemployment rate, that affect the youth of this country.

Framed around the theme “Skills for the Changing World: Empowering Youth for Meaningful Economic Participation”, Mashatile started off his speech by paying tribute to the youth of the Soweto uprising who stood in solidarity and fought against the oppressive apartheid regime on the 16th of June 1976. Although the revolutionary protest occurred almost 50 years ago was inspired by the Freedom Charter of 1955 for a “free and equal South Africa for all”, Mashatile acknowledged that today’s youth still doesn’t live in the future that their forefathers “hoped for”.

The Deputy President emphasized that the high levels of unemployment that today’s youth face are a result of unequal access to opportunities, which then create ‘unsustainable and undesirable realities’. He further emphasized the seriousness of the problem by underlining the 32.9% unemployment rate, which climbs up to 43.1% when including those who ‘gave up trying’. This rate also includes 1 of 4 unemployed graduates, thus making the issue a ‘moral emergency’. As a result, Mashatile announced the government’s plans to build partnerships with relevant stakeholders to assist the community in combating the youth’s economic exclusion.

In efforts to fight against unemployment, inequality, and poverty, the government’s Human Resource Development Council aims to create platforms that deliberate social stakeholders’ ‘skills and human capital development’ to integrate them into the South African labour market. The Human Resource Council is also reinforcing relationships with TVET colleges to ensure that their educational training aligns with the skills needed for the labour market.