One of the saddest experiences of growing up in a South African township is that of the level of violence that sometimes leads to injury or even loss of lives, writes Thandisizwe Mgudlwa, a Cape Town-Based freelance journalist.
That was the experience we were accustomed to growing up in the 1980s, those of my generation born in the 1970s and later 70s.
Those days the violence came from political insurrection or gangsterism or down right thuggery.
But of course, there was the “brighter side” to the township life.
Sport, recreation, and the arts top the chart in my book.
By all accounts, children and the youth have the most fun when engaging in these three activities.
During my township schools days in the 1980s and early 1990s these disciplines were the norm in the township, including township schools.
Somewhere, somehow along the way as the 1994 post-apartheid democratic order came into effect, steadily the cracks started showing.
The once-popular sport athletics days for primary and high schools in the townships, and district athletics meetings have become something
of the past.
Other sporting codes, drama, arts, and many recreational activities have also been thrown under the bus.
Of course, the problems related to the lack of extracurricular activity for young people didn’t all start after 1994 with the advent of democracy.
Even before 1994, and mostly during school holidays, the lack of activities for what seems to be the majority of the township kids and youths was a living reality.
Back in those days, we ended up creating our own activities like street soccer, cricket, tennis and other popular games in the townships those days.
Other options included youth clubs, boy scouts, brownies and girl guides formed part of popular township kids and youth culture.
In the early 1990s, Kwaito music emerged. The new music genre was associated township youth culture.
Kwaito music has continued to enjoy relative success, including breaking into the international market.
Their reality these days is that children and young people, especially those who reside in Townships, experience serious neglect and a lack of recreation to occupy their endless time.
Parents are away most of the day toiling for a living at some low-paying job.
School dropouts and jobless young people are idle all day.
In some way, they have been failed by a system.
There is nothing for them to aspire to.
In the post-1994 dispensation, programmes for children and youths have been available to mostly a few.
Perhaps, part of the problem has been too much expectation from a government besieged by many other pressing problems.
The challenges facing townships are multifaceted.
That’s why the process of fixing these township challenges has to be owned by all sectors and become a daily priority.
These sectors can start by finding out what has gone wrong and how to go about fixing the problems.
Committed and dedicated people in leadership roles like school principals, sports forums, and other sectors should be entrusted to get things going in reviving activities in schools and township communities.
In partnership with the Department of Education, SABC drama series in the late 1990s, Yizo-Yizo did a sterling job in exposing and highlighting what is wrong within township schools and township life in general.
We need to weed out corrupt teachers with a negative influence on the learners.
We also need to prevent unscrupulous members of the community from corrupting young people.
Good members of society, including school governing bodies (SGB), need to go the extra mile to ensure that learners get the best possible support and education to succeed.
The SABC drama Yizo-Yizo series kickstarted a process that allowed the viewers to zoom in on what is happening in the townships.
These stories can not be lost in the nation’s consciousness if we hope to turn our situation around and create a winning nation.
Most probably, a possible winning formula to turn things around lies somewhere else in the world.
We can look and learn from Ethiopia, Kenya, Jamaica, U.S.A., Germany, the UK, France, Russia, Italy, and China how they prepare athletes to be able to excel at global sporting events like the Olympics.
Then it would make perfect sense to study how they run their development programmes for their children and youths in their communities and schools.
Under Apartheid things were not perfect.
But the township situation for children and youth participation in sport, arts, and recreation has deteriorated since the dawn of the democratic dispensation in 1994.
By the looks of things, things are likely to get worse if no urgent intervention is made to reverse the situation.
Even the new programmes like cluster leagues, where teams comprising players from schools mixed up with players from the community, have in many cases collapsed or never started at all.
Even other programmes like the Siyadlala Community Mass Participation Programme; Spur Masidlale Soccer Programme, CAF African Schools Football Championship and other mass sports programmes need serious
acceleration to broaden their base and reach all of the township kids and youths.
Yesteryear sports people, men and women, and other people in the arts and recreation sectors can rescue another generation from the tragedy of wasted talents.
Let’s do it for the past, current and future generations.
Let’s all play our part.
Can you imagine if all our private and public organisations, institutions, industries, sectors and businesses ran children and youth programmes of all kinds as part of their Corporate Social Investment (CSI), how much difference could that make?
*The writer of this article is Thandisizwe Mgudlwa, a freelance journalist based in Cape Town. The views expressed by Thandisizwe Mgudlwa are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes
