HISTORY AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

Globalisation and youth development

Young people aged 15–24 years make up 1.2 billion (18%) of the six billion people in the world, 86% of whom reside in developing countries (United Nations, 2007). Africa’s share of the world population of 15–34-year-olds is 34%, and this proportion is expected to increase until 2050 (National Research Council & Institutes of Medicine, 2005). Given the size of this population, young people’s impact on societal development is likely to be profound.

The youth today are better educated than ever in human history, many more children are able to enter youth healthier than ever before and access to contraception means that family sizes are also diminishing. The spread of democratic governance offers many young people the opportunity to participate in civic and political life. And globalisation has inextricably altered the world in which they are growing up (National Research Council

& Institutes of Medicine, 2005). For those with skills and resources, globalisation offers unprecedented opportunities. However, for a variety of reasons, including their poor preparedness and lack of local opportunities, the majority will not be able to benefit (Hansen, 2005).

Transition to adulthood

The complexity associated with the transition into adulthood has brought into question the appropriateness of the traditional definition of ‘youth’.

Flanagan and Syversten (2005) write that ‘youth’ is an elastic category that begins with the biological, but ends with the cultural. The onset of puberty is a distinct biological marker associated with the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, but of itself is not enough to confer adult status. They note that taking on adult responsibilities requires economic, social and emotional maturity. These attributes develop over time through the processes of completing school, finding work, setting up a home and beginning family life. As has been the case throughout human history, the socio-cultural and economic context in which young people grow up determines both the timing and ability of youth to achieve these markers of adulthood.

Opportunities for participation in education have expanded dramatically the world over. Particularly in modern societies (although less so in sub-Saharan Africa), young people are spending longer periods of time in

education and delaying their entry into the labour market with the result that they remain financially and residentially dependent on families for longer than in the past. This in turn delays entry into stable relationships including marriage. The transition has been described as a ‘yo-yo trajectory’

that is fractured, differentiated, individualised and characterised by multiple transitions (Bradley & Devadason, 2008). What was once a short linking period between childhood and adulthood has now lengthened into what should be considered as a life stage in its own right (Arnett, 2004), and the notion of youth itself, together with efforts to facilitate youth development, has come to be fixated on problematising this period and on problem reduction approaches to young people rather than perceiving them as a group that offers many opportunities for national development. The notion of ‘youth’

is culturally constructed and unfortunately has tended to be informed by a deficit approach.

South African youth between 1976 and 1994

Historically in South Africa young people have played a significant role in at least the recent history of the country. The school students’ protest action against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in June 1976, which was met by security force brutality, was a significant turning point in resistance to the apartheid state. From that time until the un-banning of political organisations in February 1990 and the commencement of negotiations towards a democratic South Africa shortly thereafter, young black people played an increasingly active role in the political struggle.

Schools became sites of organisation and resistance. Many young people were exposed to the organised violence of the state and many (although the numbers are not known) participated in violent resistance to the apartheid regime (Dawes, 2008).

During this period, schools and universities were frequently closed and in the mid-1980s the slogan ‘liberation before education’ emerged from the ranks of young people involved in the resistance. This meant that, for a proportion at least, schooling came second to political action and there is little doubt that this period impacted negatively on the educational preparedness of the youth.

Young people in this period were viewed with considerable ambivalence.

Whereas the collective political agency of the youth in South Africa was celebrated when they took to the streets during the Soweto uprisings of 1976, the same agency became the source of ‘moral panic’ among certain segments

of society that sounded alarm bells about the brutality of young people in rendering the country ungovernable (Everatt, 2000; Seekings, 1996). Their involvement in violent protest and other forms of direct action gave rise to their being viewed as a ‘Lost Generation’. The label incorporated the concern that when the new democracy arrived, it would be undermined by generations of poorly educated citizens socialised into violence and criminality (Chikane, 1986). It is of note that this term was not applied to young whites who had to participate in the brutalities of South Africa’s war in Angola as conscripts; the

‘Lost Generation’ was ‘black and dangerous’ (Seekings, 1996; Straker, 1989;

Van Zyl Slabbert, Malan, Murais, Olivier & Riordan, 1994).

During the negotiations for a new political dispensation, youth involvement in political violence reached new heights as young people from the African National Congress and Inkatha battled for supremacy, particularly in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – the latter frequently aided and abetted by state security forces (Dawes, 2008). Van Zyl Slabbert et al. (1994, p. 11) provide a summation of the stereotyping of black youth during this period:

Given the nature of conflict in South Africa over the decades … the concept of youth became part of prevailing political, racial, ethnic and socio-economic tension. The underlying structural conditions almost compelled analysts to think of youth in racial/ethnic terms … ‘black youth’ were ‘lost’, ‘rebellious’, ‘irresponsible’… Youth as a social category in the South African context invited hyperbole and rhetorical extravagance and thus led to stereotypes that obscured and confused.

As the political struggle shifted towards negotiating a new democracy rather than fighting against the apartheid regime, political shifts in the early to mid-90s drew some young people away from ‘street protests’ to ‘street corners’ – from participation in the anti-apartheid struggle to deviance and delinquency.

Time and energy that was previously consumed in the struggle suddenly became available for other pursuits, but there were too few apparent avenues to channel this energy constructively. The centre, some argue, was no longer holding and this led to the description of this generation (of black youth) as being ‘lost’ in the political quagmire and transition of the day.

However, the concept of a ‘lost generation’ did not go unchallenged.

Although the consequences of denied and delayed education and economic opportunities had begun to show – a study of the Community Agency for Social Enquiry showed that 27% of young people were ‘marginalised’

due to failure to access education, employment and other developmental opportunities (Everatt & Orkin, 1993) – only around half a million had entered the criminal justice system. The study concluded that the concept

of a ‘lost generation’ was unfounded and that through targeted strategies, marginalisation could be turned around (Everatt & Orkin, 1993).

In addition it must be said that while the political violence of 1976–1994 took a particular form and raised the salience of youth exposure to violence in public imagination, the township environments constructed by the apartheid state had long been sites of exposure to interpersonal violence and gang activity for generations of young people (Seekings, 1996). Violence exposure, in essence, was therefore nothing new, and in the anti-apartheid struggle merely took a particular form.

A developmental approach towards youth development As South Africa moved towards democracy, the youth development sector began to appeal for a policy and institutional framework that would respond to the socio-economic needs of young people. And the youth sector had reason to be hopeful due to the central role it had played in the anti-apartheid struggle. Politics at the time was affirming of young people regarding them as ‘the valued possession of the nation’ (Mandela, 1994). The National Youth Development Forum replaced the concept of a ‘lost generation’ with a powerful idea emerging in the international literature – positive youth development (Pittman & Fleming, 1991; Pittman, O’Brian & Kimball, 1993).

While the former stereotyped young people as out of control and in need of fixing, the latter sought to draw on the inherent strengths of the youth to promote development.

Despite the build-up of momentum in the youth sector in the early 1990s, youth development received scant attention in the post-apartheid policy frameworks. High expectations were compromised by disparate views in the youth sector on the institutional vision for youth development and by an over-confidence that the political activism of young people was enough to earn them special favour in the reconstruction phase of the country (Everatt, 2000).

In the early 1990s, three institutional mechanisms – a youth ministry, youth affairs attached to another ministry and a youth agency – were considered for youth development. A decision was taken to mainstream youth development across government departments to accommodate the cross-sectoral nature of youth development and the need for integrated development. In 1996, the National Youth Commission and the South African Youth Council were formed as two institutional mechanisms to champion and co-ordinate youth development at policy and civil society levels respectively, by the National Youth Commission Act No. 19 of 1996.

A third structure, the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, was set up as a labour market intervention in 2001 to promote skills development, job creation and youth entrepreneurship.

In 1997, the National Youth Commission developed a comprehensive national youth policy that involved a consultative and inclusive process and promoted an integrated and positive approach towards youth development.

While the United Nations defines youth as being between 15–24 years of age, the National Youth Policy chose a wider age definition (14–35 years) to provide developmental opportunities for young people who had lost out on beneficiation as a result of apartheid. Such a wide definition has posed problems in meeting the diverse developmental, social and economic needs of young people. This is particularly evident in the failure of various government departments to cohere definitions of children and the youth, producing significant overlap and gaps in service delivery.

But the 1997 National Youth Policy was never adopted by parliament.

It was subsequently replaced by the National Youth Development Policy Framework 2002–2007, which adopted the youth development approach as its conceptual framework. This framework also emphasised a positive, strengths-based and inclusive approach to development, as opposed to a problem-fixing or risk-reduction approach (Hamilton, Hamilton &

Pittman, 2004; Lerner, Almerigi, Theokas & Lerner, 2005; Pittman, Irby, Tolman, Yohalem & Ferber, 2003). It was based on the premise that all young people, whether at low or high risk, need basic services, support and opportunities to thrive. More recently, the National Youth Policy 2008–2013 has replaced previous policy documents. Its emphases are on education, economic participation, health and well-being, social cohesion and civic participation, the institution of a National Youth Service (as an opportunity to provide work experience and hence a route to long-term employment), and the development of youth workers, a category of social worker dedicated to the needs of young people. Whether this policy achieves success in improving the lives of South African young people remains to be seen.

Modest achievements of the youth sector

Despite the introduction of a policy and institutional framework for youth development, the achievements of the sector have been modest. Youth development programmes remain on a small scale and have had minimal impact on the key indicators of youth development (Morrow et al., 2005;

Richter et al., 2005). A 2007 review of the National Youth Commission reported that performance was hampered by a narrow interpretation of its mandate to focus solely on policy development at the expense of implementation (Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of Chapter Nine and Associated Institutions, 2007). Although the co-ordination of youth development across many sectors is a global challenge (World Bank, 2006), integration of and accountability for youth development in South Africa was especially constrained by the failure of parliament to adopt the National Youth Policy in 2000. As a result, line function departments could not be held accountable for service delivery. Potgieter-Ggubule (2007) argues further that while young people were widely consulted during the drafting of the National Youth Policy, government departments were informed after the fact. As a result, buy-in to the policy, alignment with sector-specific policies and resourcing of the youth policy were compromised. The youth sector, like most government institutions, has also been constrained by chronically poor resource allocation, weak institutional capacity, regular staff turn-over and sometimes poor programme choices (Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of Chapter Nine and Associated Institutions, 2007). While creating space for the youth voice and growing youth leadership is central to youth development, over-reliance on young people with insufficient experience and skill to staff the commission limited the reach of its work.