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Doomed generation: Not if Zimbabwe's youth can seize the day
Maureen Kademaunga, OSISA
June 30, 2011

http://www.osisa.org/openspace/zimbabwe/youth-doomed-generation

John F. Kennedy once said, "Those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

The predicament that young people in Zimbabwe face is not that they lack the capacity to dream of a better future or the desire to work towards it but that their future is in the hands of an older generation that is obsessed with the past. Accordingly, political, social and economic decisions in Zimbabwe are based on outdated ideologies as this older generation seeks to justify its un-willingness to hand over power and nurture the next generation. If these elders remain stuck in the past, the disastrous effects will be felt for years and possibly for generations to come.

Today's youth listen to their elders' stories of the past and wish that they had been part of an earlier generation when they would have benefited from the country's renowned education system, would have enjoyed decent health care and could have expected to find a job after graduation. Instead the polarised politics and economic misery of today have left the youth with little but scars.

Young people have fallen victim to the schemes and gamesmanship of their political elders. Many have been brainwashed with destructive political doctrines and instructed to maim and kill. These young people have been victims of politicians who have used and abused them as tools in their terror campaigns. Violence is their only role. They have been disenfranchised from mainstream politics at all levels, from the party political level to the national electoral level. They have largely been disregarded in electoral calculations because they are viewed as an insignificant group in terms of decision-making processes.

Zimbabwe's current generation of future leaders is also not well placed to confidently assume responsibility of the economy because the elite elders of today instead of preparing the younger generation to take-over have systematically disempowered and disenfranchised them. Most young people have no involvement in mainstream economic activities. The few that are well-off or are lucky enough to have jobs are mainly beneficiaries of unscrupulous political processes, such as the fast-track land reform, indigenisation and empowerment programmes. Young people that are involved are mere window-dressing. They are there to give lame dignity to these corrupt schemes. They are spoon-fed with the proceeds but are provided with very little knowledge about how to really run a company let alone the economy.

It would also be impossible for me not to acknowledge the impact that Zimbabwe's decade-long political and economic crisis has had on the next generation's social future. The past decade has witnessed a mass exodus of young people seeking better education and living standards in other countries. They have been forced to face the rigours of life in the diaspora, while slowly becoming numb to the situation back home and gradually losing their patriotic fervour. The end result is a generation of people living overseas, whose motivations are survival and who are detached from the realities of Zimbabwe as a developing nation and are increasingly committed to their current lives in foreign countries rather than the role they can play in rebuilding their own nation. Meanwhile, those who have stayed at home have suffered the combined effects of a poor education system, joblessness, and the agonising realities of the HIV/AIDS scourge among other things.

Zimbabwe's next generation is a generation whose future has been stolen. What's worse is that this generation will in the not so distant future also inherit problems that are not of their making and that they currently are not equipped to resolve. It is imperative that the young begin to understand their role as the next generation and to begin to assert themselves as the inheritors of Zimbabwe. There is need for young academics, professionals, social groups and pressure groups to begin to agitate and organise to challenge the status quo and the older generation, which has chosen to relegate them to a level of insignificance and continues to destroy their future while they look on from the sidelines.

The government is the custodian of the state and must find a way of redeeming the future of Zimbabwe's next generation by making deliberate efforts to involve them in decision-making processes and the formulation of policies in order to promote the involvement of young men and women in governance. Having said this, I maintain that the onus is on young people on Zimbabwe's next generation to take responsibility for their own future. They must claim what is rightly theirs and guard their inheritance jealously.

It is after all their country too and their future.

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