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The Young Communist League of South Africa (uFasimba) welcomes and applauds the highly anticipated decision by the Minister of Defense and Military Veterans, Lindiwe Sisulu, to formally propose to parliament the military service for out of school youth. The YCLSA resolved on Military Service in our National Council in held 2008, and has continuously called for the introduction of such military service.
This is a victory for the YCLSA and for the youth of our country who remain hopeless and helpless, but more importantly it is a much needed intervention in addressing some of the social ills in our society. Military service will not be a panacea for all problems faced by young people in society but it can be utilized as an effective tool to address issues of unemployment, discipline, instilling patriotism and training young people within the Defense force to be able to work in various sectors. The fact that there are facilities that are idle because of the lack of skills within the military shows the need to recruit and train more young people to undertake these tasks.
Critical to opening up the military to young people, we also hope that more and more black young South Africans will find interest in joining the military, as one of our concerns is the racial profile of the defense force.
This will also ensure that many young people will be ready to serve in time on need for the protection of the sovereignty of our country, and thus, South Africa can be safer. In the past and in some instances presently around the world (such as in Iraq and Afghanistan), unskilled volunteers would be used to fight wars and thus our country can better be served by this process. This would curb such a dilemma to a large extent and increase the number of well-trained soldiers.
We also hope that part of this discussion will include the role of the military during peacetime. There is enormous skills and capacity within the army that can help in infrastructure development, service delivery, health, education and many other areas.
We encourage young people to support this initiative and take advantage of this opportunity. We hope that this is the beginning of many constructive initiatives by government that will work in the interest of Nation building and patriotism. In leading by example, the YCL encourages its members and leaders to register with the Reserve Army as a way to introduce this process. We will await the law and positively contribute.