The enduring lesson of South Africa’s history is that youth activism is an intergenerational relay, not a hierarchy of sacrifice, writes Cornelius Monama
Every generation of young South Africans has inherited a different battlefield. The generation of 1944 confronted political stagnation. The generation of 1976 confronted Bantu Education. The Young Lions of the 1980s confronted a militarised apartheid state. The post-1994 generation confronted economic exclusion and the unfinished question of educational access. Today’s youth face a different enemy in the form of unemployment, inequality, and economic exclusion.
As Frantz Fanon reminded us, each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it. Addressing young South Africans many years ago, Moses Kotane issued a profound challenge: “At this hour of destiny, your country and your people need you. The future of South Africa is in your hands, and it will be what you make of it.”
Though expressed in a different epoch and to a different audience, Kotane’s words resonate with undiminished force. Young people are not passive heirs to history but its active architects. Youth activism transcends isolated eruptions. It forms an intergenerational relay. Each generation seizes the baton, propels the struggle amid its unique exigencies and passes it onward.
June 16, 1976, stands as one of the most defining moments in this relay. On that day, an apartheid regime turned its guns on unarmed schoolchildren protesting the injustices of Bantu Education. The Soweto Uprising was not just a rebellion. It was a moral rupture that exposed apartheid’s brutality to the world and ignited a new phase of resistance.
We owe an enduring debt to the Class of 1976. Their courage altered the course of our history. But they did not emerge from a vacuum. The history of South Africa’s liberation is incomplete without recognising the role of youth at every decisive turning point.
Since the ANC Youth League’s founding in 1944, successive generations of young South Africans have served as catalysts for transformation, infusing the liberation movement with urgency, militancy, and ideological depth. The 1944 cohort forged the ANC into a mass-based force. The 1976 generation elevated educational equality to the core of the liberation struggle. The Young Lions of the 1980s extended resistance into every sphere of society, rendering apartheid ungovernable and ultimately untenable.
As a survivor of that fearless and death-defying generation inspired by Oliver Tambo’s call to action, I remain conscious of the extraordinary sacrifices made under conditions of extreme repression. Organising under such conditions required immense courage. However, historical honesty demands that we resist ranking generations by militancy or sacrifice. No generation has a monopoly on courage and militancy. South Africa’s liberation history is best understood as a continuum of struggle, where each generation inherits unfinished tasks and passes the baton forward.
The post-1994 generation inherited political freedom yet confronted enduring economic exclusion. Operating within a constitutional democracy that enshrines freedoms of expression, association, and protest—rights denied their predecessors—this reality reveals how one generation’s victories become the terrain on which the next advances the struggle.
The Fees Must Fall movement elevated demands for accessible, free higher education to the centre of national discourse. Building on prior generations’ foundations, it compelled historic policy responses including the major expansion of NSFAS. No credible account of democratic progress can overlook the decisive role of young people in prizing open the doors of learning that apartheid had sealed.
Since 1994, South Africa has achieved substantial educational gains: near-universal enrolment, no-fee schools, nutrition programmes, expanded early childhood development, broadened NSFAS access, and the growth of TVET colleges with skills initiatives. These have unlocked opportunities for millions previously excluded.
Beyond education, the democratic state has placed youth at the centre of development through the National Youth Development Agency, entrepreneurship programmes, employment initiatives, and skills interventions. Programmes such as the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention seek to bridge learning and livelihood, while entrepreneurship support cultivates innovators for a changing global economy. These gains affirm that earlier generations’ sacrifices were not in vain.
However, progress remains uneven and incomplete. Youth unemployment persists as one of our gravest crises, with millions of young South Africans consigned to the margins of the economy. Poverty, inequality, crime, substance abuse, and gender-based violence continue to define the lived reality of far too many. These conditions ferment frustration and risk breeding widespread disengagement.
Such realities should caution us against simplistic generational judgments. The challenge is not to compare generations but to understand them. Each generation of South African youth has carried a distinct and evolving mission in the long journey of the nation’s struggle for dignity, freedom, and justice. Every generation confronts different forms of power and different contradictions. Each must develop strategies suited to its historical moment, exactly as Fanon urged.
The generation of 1944 set out to infuse the African National Congress with fresh militancy and revolutionary energy, reawakening a movement that had grown complacent. The generation of 1976 confronted the dehumanising machinery of Bantu Education, transforming a narrow protest against inferior schooling into a national uprising that shook the foundations of apartheid.
The Young Lions of the 1980s embraced a strategy of radical disruption, making large parts of the country ungovernable and hastening the regime’s collapse. The mission of today’s youth is no less critical: to defeat poverty, inequality, and unemployment; to build an inclusive economy; to harness technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship for social progress; and to strengthen our constitutional democracy.
This mission demands ethical leadership, rigorous political education, and a revitalised culture of activism rooted in service to society rather than personal advancement. A troubling feature of contemporary youth politics is the tendency to equate empowerment with access to political office. Critics contend that many young activists appear primarily preoccupied with becoming councillors, MPLs, MPs, MECs or Ministers.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with aspiring to public office, profound societal transformation cannot be achieved through politicians alone. We must interrogate whether our prevailing conception of youth empowerment has narrowed unduly. Campaigns such as “Blue Lights” and “Mosha Paleng” may command attention, yet they risk mirroring the ambitions of a narrow elite rather than addressing the strategic imperatives of the broader youth populace.
The majority of young South Africans are not preoccupied with blue lights, but in securing employment, acquiring marketable skills, accessing quality education, building viable businesses, and claiming a dignified future. Should we not therefore pursue equally vigorous campaigns to cultivate more PhDs, scientists, engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, industrialists, and thought leaders? Should youth success be measured primarily by proximity to political power or equally by mastery of knowledge, technological ingenuity, productive enterprise, and intellectual leadership?
Youth agency cannot be reduced to making demands on the state. Though government bears critical responsibilities, young people possess their own agency and autonomous capacity for change. South Africa’s history demonstrates that youth have never merely waited for delivery. They have consistently organised, mobilised, and acted decisively to reshape their conditions.
The ANC Youth League was historically strongest when it served as a generator of ideas and a force capable of shaping the ideological direction of the liberation movement. A vibrant youth movement should be judged not only by the number of office-bearers it produces, but also by its ability to develop thinkers, innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and community leaders. That is the highest expression of youth agency. The mission of this generation is therefore larger than securing positions of authority.
The best tribute we can pay to the Class of 1976, the Young Lions of the 1980s, and every preceding generation is not merely to remember them, but to continue their work. June 16 must be more than a commemoration. It must be a call to action.
The enduring lesson of South Africa’s history is that youth activism is an intergenerational relay, not a hierarchy of sacrifice. Each generation inherits unfinished historical tasks, reimagines the struggle in response to its material conditions, and passes the baton forward to those who must continue the journey.
As Moses Kotane reminded us, the future of South Africa will be what its young people make of it. And as Frantz Fanon warned, every generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.
The question confronting today’s youth is whether they will rise to the unique demands of their era. It is in their hands.
Cornelius Monama is former National Communication Manager of the ANC. He writes in his personal capacity.