Cape Town — Unemployed, ill-educated youth in rural areas are eager to take part in development initiatives in their local communities which are ravaged by poverty and debt.
This was the key message delivered by Wilfred Wentzel a researcher with Origiline, in a presentation entitled, "Rural Youth - from grim statistics to human assets" at the "Towards Carnegie III" conference under way at the University of Cape Town.
Sketching an environment of rural villages in which 60 percent unemployment was the norm and some two thirds of high school students dropped out before their final matric year, Wentzel focused on South Africa's Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP) and its work among youth in all of the country's provinces, except for the Western Cape.
"Local village economies are bleeding," said Wentzel, as he listed the challenges facing rural sites where the Department of Rural Development & Land Reform was active through the CRDP.
Government grants were the main source of household income in rural villages and local economies depended on monthly government cash injections of transfer payments. However, these funds seldom circulated in the communities, but were used to pay debts that had been incurred outside the village.
Up to 80 percent of households lived in poverty and essential services such as police, hospital, high school, banks, shops were costly to access and service quality was far from satisfactory.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) chose to work with unemployed youth because of their strategic importance as a social group which accounts for a disproportionately large share of the population and "are the parents and leaders of tomorrow".
Young people are also an "extremely vulnerable and stressed social group," said Wentzel. According to Statistics South Africa, the number of annual recorded deaths in the 20 to 45 year old age group more than doubled between 1997 and 2002. More than 70 percent of the deaths in the 15 to 49 years old age group were Aids related.
The youth teams that were organized by the development programme were given specific tasks and roles and within two weeks were given specific tasks and roles.
"The groups demonstrated a hunger and appetite for development," said Wentzel adding that they were eager to continue the work even once the government departmental officials had left.
The presentations drew sharp audience criticism, concerned that the Department of Rural Development & Land Reform (DRDLR) was engaged in small-scale programmes that did not address much larger and systemic sources of poverty.
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The deputy director-general within the department, Moshe Swartz, welcomed the critique, but added that the various presentations had not focused on land reform, but rather they had concentrated on work at the micro level, designed to give rural people a voice and platform to engage with government.
Chief director, Enterprise Development within the DRDLR, Xoliswa Jozana acknowledged that South African youth had no "culture of agricultural production". None of the youth involved in the village teams and community development projects had raised the issue of access to land because they had no interest in agriculture.
"We need to make rural areas attractive to keep people there. In time, we hope to keep people there, with assistance of private sector and NGOs," Jozana added.
The conference is entitled "Towards Carnegie III: Strategies to Overcome Poverty and Inequality". Two earlier conferences and research programmes, looking at similar issues in the 1930 and 1980s, were funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
