0 comments
0 viewsSpecial Report: Activate! Leadership for Public Innovation programme
When people ask why there is so much violent crime in this country, I want to tell them that I know why. Not the big answer on behalf of all the violent criminals in South Africa, but a small answer, an answer on my life. There are things that I have done, bad things, which I wish I could undo, but I can’t bring myself to tell you about them. The truth is I’m scared of going back to prison.
I came out of jail consumed by anger but determined to leave the gangster life. As a result, I was forced to leave Khuma township near Stilfontein in North West and go and live with my grandfather in Ventersdorp, about 100km from Pretoria. He was strict to the point of never even talking to me, and I spent most days on the hills crying in frustration.
Eventually I cursed myself enough not to care and I went home to face the music. Nobody was there to help me bury my past, I was on my own.
During my time in prison, I saw someone being strangled and then dismembered into 3 pieces. No one was charged for that. I was bullied and spent days without food. My gangster friends deserted me. But in fact I arrived in prison already filled with rage. It was a fury born of bitterness and a desire for revenge.
I craved money and popularity and used drugs to hide my shame and loneliness and battle the demons within me. But that never solved the problems; instead it made matters worse. One day I was alone when I was attacked by rival gangsters. I was stabbed above my left eye, dragged behind a moving car and left for dead. But getting revenge never satisfied me – it made me even angrier.
The people I hurt often lived on the on the other side of the mine dump that hides Khuma township from Stilfontein. The people who lived there took no notice of us, and I felt very small when I went there. It was there that I decided I would definitely be a “somebody” in life, and thought that becoming a gangster would give me the self-esteem I wanted so badly. I was 10 years old when I joined that gang.
But now I’m part of another gang: Activate! brings together young leaders across South Africa, building their sense of identity, belonging and common purpose. That purpose is to make our country a better place.
I had completed school after being released from prison, but had no money to study to become the political journalist that I wanted to be. So I decided to join loveLife’s debating programme and eventually became a groundBREAKER, one of loveLife’s young leaders.
A year later I was thrilled to be a given a learnership to study child and youth-care work, but it became a dead end, then I was appointed as a sports facilitator as part of the Expanded Public Works Programme until March this year.
I am now once again unemployed. In fact, to write this article, I had to ask for money to use a computer at an internet café.
My friends and I would like to start a non-governmental organisation that can help young people navigate their lives, mediating access to opportunities for education and work. I think I can lift my curse by helping other young people who lose hope that their lives will get better.
There are so many other young people out there just like me. Our smouldering anger has few outlets. I’m now free, but to be honest it feels like I’m on parole. The circumstances of my life keep threatening to shackle my hopes and handcuff my dreams.
I have changed a lot, but I’m also the same person who felt like a nobody in front of white people, whose parents didn’t love me, who did bad things and went to prison, who came out with nobody to talk to and no place to go.
Actually, I’m still motivated by the same basic instincts that caused me to join the gang. I want to belong, to know who I am and to feel that I have a purpose. It was that desire that caused me to join loveLife in the same way as I had joined the BDC gang a decade before. My material condition hasn’t changed much, but I now have some power to respond differently to life.
I’m not suggesting that “messing with our minds” is a substitute for jobs and further education, but if you’re invisible to people, you get resentful, and helplessness gives rise to anger. You feel like a victim and angry victims want to take back what they think belongs to them. Victimhood feeds a sense of entitlement that devalues education and hard work. The creation of opportunities and a positive psyche must go together.
Many young South Africans are still looking for a new identity. They don’t want to be defined as the heirs of apartheid, but as shapers of the future. Half of our population is under 25 years old. Other countries have used the same demographic to improve their productivity. We should be asking how we can capitalise on the youth dividend, rather than how we can deal with the “problem of youth unemployment”.
As much as there are grand schemes for jobs and education, we need to build “small connections” for young people in every town and rural area. My link to other young people at loveLife made me realise that I was not alone, and gave me a few handholds to further opportunities. Even writing this article makes me feel that I am somebody.
Finally, we need role models in our community who constitute a different sort of gang leader, whom other young people respect and trust. But leadership won’t just happen by itself, or even through training programmes. Those individuals who do benefit will crave escape from the circumstances that keep pulling them down. We need to learn from the West Sides and the BDCs and the 27s that leadership development requires systematic organisation and structured networks, so that even the leaders feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves.
Tshekiso Molohlanyi is part of the Activate! Leadership for Public Innovation programme, a national network of diverse young people committed to social transformation. Go to: www.activateleadership.co.za
This article has been edited for Supernews with permission from Activate! The full article was originally published by the Sunday Times on the 3rd June 2012 as part of Youth Month