Date: 16/06/2012

Source: IFP

Title: SA: Buthelezi: Address by the President of the Inkatha Freedom Party, during IFP Youth Brigade's celebration of Youth Day,Dondotha Sports Ground, uThungulu District, KZN

Today we celebrate national Youth Day. It is my privilege to share this day with you, the vanguard of our Party. As I look across this sports ground, I see young men and women who are already leaders because of the choices you are making for yourself and your future. When I was 15 years old, I looked to the future and asked myself,
"What kind of man do I want to become?" I had the option of idly waiting around to take over my inherited position as Head of the Buthelezi Clan, and then staying in Mahlabathini all my life, hoping that I was doing an okay job and people generally liked me. But would that be enough? Would that honour my family, myself and my God? For
me, it was not enough. I knew that the decisions I made that day would create a future, for better or worse, that I would need to live with. I therefore chose to enter Adams College. I chose education. After Adams College, I pursued education into the University of Fort Hare. And when I was rusticated from Fort Hare for my political
activism in the ANC Youth League, I pursued education at the University of Natal. I sensed that education was the key to the future I wanted to create. The man I wanted to become would have wisdom grounded in knowledge, he would be able to hold his own in any conversation, he would never be ashamed for ignorance, he would be able to help others because of what he knew and could do, he would be able to stand against wrong, even at the highest level of government, because he knew the law and understood politics. I was consciously
creating that man, my future, with every decision I made. When I was 19, I chose to change South Africa in my future, and I became politically active in the liberation struggle. When I was 23, I made a choice to be a husband in my future and I got married. When I was 24, I made a choice to serve my people rather than creating a future in which I practiced law. When I was 25, I chose to be a father in my future and my first child was born. Many of the choices we make at a young age affect our lives forever, often in fundamental ways. The future is not a fuzzy distant dream that will happen to us when we are old. The future is now. The future is today. I am passionate about bringing this message to the youth of the IFP on this important day in South Africa's calendar. I believe it is a
message that can change your life. As we celebrate Youth Day together, and commemorate the tragic events of June 16th 1976, we cannot fail to recognise that our country is in crisis and the future is all but secure. South Africa grapples with entrenched problems and many of our people are suffering. But those who suffer by far the most are our youth. While the unemployment rate in South Africa is 25%, unemployment among  young people is 49%. While many young people want to work, only half of them can find a job. A university education is expensive and does not hold the promise of work. You are told you need experience to get a job, but you can't get experience unless you work. The Government's Youth Wage Subsidy has been stalled by the ANC's alliance partner.
Buying property and owning a house is an impossible dream. Debt is rising, while the cost of living keeps going up. HIV and Aids are an ever-present concern. Personal safety is uncertain. Stress is high. Alcohol and drugs are a temptation. There is not enough to do, not enough to eat, not enough to inspire hope. My generation grew up in a country where political freedom was denied, movement was restricted, dignity was trampled and education was poor. Yet somehow I feel that the battle you are facing today as young people in South Africa is incomparable. After all, you live in a country that is politically free and a world that is moving forward. You are continually told that you are a free generation. But you are not truly free to work when there are no jobs to be found, or truly free to go anywhere when you can't afford transport, or truly free to learn when the education system is failing. Since the tragedy of June 16th 1976, I have often been asked why the youth of South Africa rose in protest. Why did they march in Soweto that day? We know that the whole system of Bantu education was marked by overcrowded classrooms, inadequately trained teachers, appalling insignificant funding, ramshackle school buildings and separate schools and universities. It was a time bomb for social discontent. We also know that there was a profound imbalance in Government's expenditure on education for white children and black children. They were spending about R144 per child on whites, and only R12,46 on blacks. But young students didn't rise in protest over the unfairness of it all. They were protesting because they knew that by withholding education, Government was withholding their future. Young people understood this. They sensed the extent of the consequences for their
own lives, beyond the immediate injustice. To this day I think Inkatha better understood the fears and needs of
South Africa's youth than the ANC did. The ANC's mission-in-exile, and people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, urged young people to burn down their schools in protest over their inferior quality. Across South Africa education was disrupted and classrooms were burnt to the ground. Prime Minister John Voster reacted with contempt, saying he would simply use funds from the paltry black education budget to fix these schools, to the detriment of young students. Yet still ANC supporters chanted the slogan "Liberation now, education later". Inkatha looked deeper and said "Education for liberation". We understood that knowledge is the best leverage against oppression. We
also understood that the ANC was sacrificing the future of many young people for a so-called "greater good" ? a political liberation that could be achieved through other means. So, throughout KwaZulu, schools continued to function, teachers turned up to teach and the basic right to education was respected. A seasoned journalist once asked me how schools in KwaZulu managed to start on time each morning, when chaos reigned everywhere else. I could only answer that Inkatha taught discipline, self-help and self-reliance for the sake of our collective future. Although KwaZulu received the least government funding of all the provinces, we continued to build and maintain schools, train teachers and educate children. Through my administration, communities in KwaZulu matched government funding Rand for Rand, raising resources for the sake of our youths' education. As the Chief Minister of KwaZulu, I continually urged the Government to divert armaments resources to education. But Government was deaf. On the 21st of March 1976, I called a rally at the Jabulani Amphitheatre in Soweto and warned the Government of an imminent uprising. I desperately sought to convince the Government to change its policies before a crisis erupted. Indeed, I titled my address "In This Approaching Hour of Crisis". But again the Government was deaf. So deaf, in fact, that I was later accused by the top official of the municipal Bantu Administration in Soweto of having come to Soweto to incite the youth. Just a few weeks after our rally, on the 16th of June 1976, 20 000 pupils from Soweto began a protest march. Among them were younger children, who should not have been there. The police quickly intervened to stop the protest and teargas was fired. And then the unthinkable happened. The police opened live fire on the crowd and young people began to die. To this day I ask myself, "Who would shoot at children?" But at that time it seems there were no children; only victims of a war that raged between one South African and another. In the 18 months that followed, chaos descended as migrant hostels were attacked and violent crowds began gruesome acts of necklacing. At Mzimhlophe township, some students organised a stay away without informing hostel dwellers. They simply barricaded the roads and burned tyres. As a result, violent clashes began between the hostel dwellers and the residents of Mzimhlophe township. At that time, I was working closely with Dr Beyers Naude of the Christian Institute in Johannesburg. He phoned me alerting me of the situation and a single-engine plane piloted by Reverend Cedric Mayson was sent to pick me up from Ulundi in order to try and mediate in the Mzimhlophe conflict. The Commissioner of Police in Johannesburg immediately issued a
warning that if I dared to go to Mzimhlophe, he would take action against me. Mrs Helen Suzman, a white anti-apartheid politician and a good friend, called me and plea