Johannesburg — Ahead of this year's International Youth Day, AllAfrica's Nontobeko Mlambo spoke to Namatai Kwekweza, founder and Director of WELEAD Trust. Kwekweza is the Kofi Atta Annan NextGen Democracy Prize winner, a prize awarded to young extraordinary leaders aged between 18 and 30.
Please tell us a bit about who you are, what WELEAD is, and what you do.
My name is Namatai Kwekweza, and I am a 24-year-old outspoken feminist, Pan-African, constitutionalism advocate, and human rights activist. I am an aspiring constitutional and international human rights lawyer and also the founder and Director of WELEAD Trust, a youth leadership development organisation founded in 2017 on the idea that youth leadership development is the most efficient and sustainable way to develop the world. The organisation believes that development starts with young people and is accelerated when young people harness their leadership capabilities.
The WELEAD Trust works towards bringing young people together by stimulating and encouraging peer-to-peer leadership development as well as assisting young people in building constructive interactions and networks. Youth leadership development is the core business of the organisation, and its leadership development tools are holistic with an evolving construct that is shaped by the young people we work with. The organisation's work is divided into two primary areas, which include advocacy through the WE Advocate Center and leadership development through the WE Society. The organisation's values make up the acronym served," which stands for "servant leadership, "empathy, "responsibility, "volunteerism, "expression," and "democracy.
What does peace mean to you?
Peace to me, means both the absence of direct violence as well as building sufficient social, economic, and political infrastructure that supports sustainable positive peace. I learned the true meaning of peace from the work of the Institute of Economics and Peace and realised that peace is not a thing of chance. Those who organise war and violence are very deliberate and intentional. Therefore, peace is about being equally deliberate, intentional, and organised.
Peace, to me, means living in a society where there is little to no structural violence due to low levels of corruption, good governance, and excellent service delivery. Peace means that there is access to opportunity, reduced inequality, and systems that advance human potential through human capital development. I believe the diverse elements of peace are mutually inclusive,and sustainable peace is only possible if we intentionally, deliberately, and pragmatically build sufficient and holistic systems that advance not only high-quality life but also advance human security and measure success based on the happiness index.
What inspired you to become involved in community youth leadership?
Limited meaningful youth participation in all sectors of society inspired me to become involved in community youth leadership. The idea that youth have the passion, skills, and keen interest to lead is a great motivation for the work that is done at the organisation where I work. I am inspired to do this work by the great team at WELEAD Trust and the communities we serve and work with to advance the disruption of ageist normative frameworks and leadership inequalities.
I know that the question of youth representation is a global issue, with most of the world's population being young and very few of them being represented in leadership. An example is in my country Zimbabwe's parliament, where of the 210 seats available in the Zimbabwean Parliament, just six individuals under the age of 35 were elected to the National Assembly in the 2018 elections. The percentage of young people in the Parliament of Zimbabwe in 2018 was 2.85%, yet youth constitute about 67.9% of the total population, making representative democracy a fallacy. I am keen to work with a strong team to change this and promote youth leadership to ensure the effective participation of young people in Zimbabwe and beyond.
What are some of the challenges you think the Zimbabwean youth are facing today?
Zimbabwean youth are faced with a plethora of challenges, ranging from political to economic to social. With Zimbabwe's Harmonized Election about 3 months away, exclusionary tendencies and behaviors, particularly aimed at young people, have led to low levels of youth participation in the electoral process.
The engagement of young people in Zimbabwe's elections is still relatively low. It has the least impact, despite the fact that elections are one of the most significant benchmarks for participation in development. National policies that are ageist and normative have greatly contributed to youth being excluded from decision-making processes. For example, one of the requirements for one to become a senator, a judge, a commissioner, or a president is to be 40 years old or older.
In Zimbabwe, according to the Constitution, a youth is anyone between the ages of 15 and 35, meaning youth are legally excluded from all these roles, which violates Section 56 of the Constitution on non-discrimination on the basis of age. In this light, youth have faced the challenge of under-representation, as the 2018 election led to a 2.85% youth representation in Parliament in a country with a 67.7% youth population. The current levels of unemployment, as well as the bulging of the informal economy, have disproportionately affected youth, with young women being the most affected due to the patriarchal nature of Zimbabwean society. The country is currently faced with a drug and substance abuse pandemic, and the youth population is the most affected.
How has your community changed since WELEAD became involved in youth leadership?
WELEAD Trust has been one of the leading actors in the Zimbabwean youth movement and has worked to contribute to the representation and participation of youth in Zimbabwe along with other great organisations and activists, which we celebrate and recognise. The successes we have experienced have been through collaborations and contributions to the broad efforts of vibrate youth civil society organisations and community based organisations in Zimbabwe.
The WELEAD Trust, which has since 2019 worked with the youth movement, has called for a youth quota and youth-friendly reforms to ensure youth representation in public office. A 10-seat youth quota system was introduced in the upcoming election, and WELEAD Trust continues to work to ensure that beyond the quota system, sincere and genuine youth-friendly reforms are implemented to ensure the leadership and representation of youth in public life.
The organisation has also accelerated youth participation in the upcoming election through the Youth Voter Bus, in which the organisation went to bus termini to encourage people to register to vote. Over the past five and a half years, the organisation, through its programmes, has directly trained young people to lead in their communities, provided a youth network that is safe for young people to grow their leadership capacity, advocated against gender-based violence, and also conducted feminist research to help young feminists navigate the leadership terrain.
During the voter registration blitz, the WELEAD Trust would distribute fliers and use social media to encourage youth to register to vote. Young people would go and register there and then, while others became optimistic and promised to participate in the upcoming election. Through the Youth Voter Bus for Young Women, the WELEAD Trust also promoted the participation of young women in the electoral process, and this mainstreaming of gender in electoral programming is a change from traditional programming. The WELEAD Trust also capacitated young people with information on the Constitution, which promoted their informed participation in different processes.
What is the role of youth in achieving a culture of peace in Zimbabwe and Africa?
Young people can play a positive role in peacebuilding. They work towards conflict prevention, build peace during conflict, deliver humanitarian support, and participate in post-conflict peace, truth, and reconciliation processes. Youth can also be agents of positive peace in terms of addressing not only the challenges of physical violence but also the challenges of structural and cultural violence and the broader social change processes to transform violent, oppressive, and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviors, relationships, and attitudes, into more participatory and inclusive ones.
International instruments like the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace, and Security acknowledge young people as agents of peace and stipulate how governments should involve youth to participate peacefully in peaceful processes. The African Youth Charter, particularly Article 17, enunciates the role of youth in peacebuilding and conflict management. Therefore, young people can not only be bystanders in peace processes but active leaders and decision-makers.
What can be done to ensure that youth-led initiatives, especially for peace, receive the attention and funding they deserve?
In order to ensure that youth-led initiatives receive the attention and funding they need, it is paramount to simplify and put in place more youth-friendly prerequisites for getting funding for youth-led initiatives. There is a need for youth-friendly, feminist, pan-African, and intersectional funding reforms that must happen to ensure addressing global injustices in philanthropy and funding.
Funding reforms include having persons from receipt groups be part of every stage of designing the distribution of funding, systemic and structural courage from funders towards having funding models that are human-centered, and imploring an empathy mapping approach to funding distribution as well as a futures literacy and foresight practice approach to youth funding. There is a need to have funding models that work for activists and social movements, as well as de-professionalizing access to funding, as this is one of the things that makes it hard for youth to access funds. Finally, there is a need to engage African business leaders and promote a culture of giving back and forming philanthropic ventures that are not only humanitarian in nature but are also human rights centered.
Humanitarian issues emanate from strong cultures of tyranny and impunity and institutionalized cultures of violation of human rights. Funds to fight tyranny must not only come from Western business leaders. They must also come from African business leaders due to the fact that a better-governed Africa promotes ease of doing business. Additionally, the struggle for a better Africa would be more centered around Africans if Africans fund their own struggle.
How can we build cross-generational exchanges and ensure co-leadership among different generations of political and peace activists?
There is a need for rethinking, reimagining, and redesigning leadership development to achieve stronger and more consistent exchanges between people of diverse generations. Generational equity and equality should be guiding principles in peace processes, from leadership to project beneficiaries. Older and younger generations have to participate at all levels of peace initiatives, from project management to project implementation. Creating an environment where political and peace activists are aware of generational differences and their potential contributions and where leaders from different generations are clearly identified and mutually respected is important.
Another way to build cross-generational exchanges and ensure co-leadership is by promoting inter-generational solidarity. In addition, civic society organisations can carry out community-based programmes impacting intergenerational relations. Governments can also enact various policy instruments that can have a direct and indirect impact on the quality of dialogue between generations.
What responses should the government be putting in place to address concerns?
The government, through parliament, should put in place youth-friendly reforms in the form of policies to address youth concerns. The government should remove ageist normative policies that exclude the youth demography from decision-making bodies like the commissions and the presidential office itself. In addition, the government should ensure a peaceful and youth-friendly environment in the country to accelerate youth participation in different governance processes and ensure they are part of decision-making. The government should also ensure that there is a rule of law in the country so as to restore youth trust in the system. The rights of youth must be respected; intimidation, imprisonment, and all human rights violations must stop to ensure youth feel safe to show up and participate.
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What do you feel is the most important thing to teach youth today?
Teaching youth to participate is the most important thing today. The reason why young people do not participate in different sectors of life as provided for in Section 20 of the Constitution is because of their ignorance of these processes as well as how they impact their lives. An example is that youth think that not voting is a protest and are not aware of how politics and decision-making processes affect their social and economic lifestyles, even as individuals. Teaching young people about constitutionalism, for example, can help promote their participation as they get to know their responsibilities and rights as well.
Over the years, youth participation has been cosmetic due to a lack of knowledge among young people, so capacitating them with knowledge on these processes would lead to their meaningful and effective participation. Youth must be consistently reminded that the world belongs to those who show up and participate. Youth must act, or they risk being acted upon. Youth must decide, as they risk having decisions made for them that will shape the future they will have to live in. Youth must also have courage, knowing fully well that those who have power are going to just give it away. Youth must organise to claim space and power and use them to build a better Africa and a better world.
What changes do the youth want to see in Zimbabwe in the future?
I have come to the realisation that the most important change that youth want to see in Zimbabwe is the meaningful inclusion of young people in political and socio-economic processes in the country. Young people feel disenfranchised from the country's economic activities and cry foul over how corruption has led to the economy emphasising connections rather than rewarding hard work.
Young people, therefore, dream of economic policies and programmes that ensure the inclusion of youth in the economy. Youth-friendly electoral and governance reforms are what young people desire to see so as to ensure their representation at different levels of decision-making. Young people also lack trust in the government and its structures due to ageistic normative policies that bar youth from participating, like the 40-year age cap for one to run for the presidency, for the senate, and to be a commissioner. Having youth-friendly reforms would restore youth trust in the system. Finally, youth also want basic service delivery in their country. Youth want the dignity of quality, affordable education, access to health care, food, water, and proper sewer systems. Youth want a stable economy that allows them to be gainfully employed and also run viable businesses. Youth want access to property ownership, affordable housing, land, and gold claims. Youth want radical, fair, and holistic inclusion at all levels of the social, economic, and political aspects of life.
What advice would you give someone considering becoming a youth leader in their community?
The future is what we make of it through what we do now. Show up with empathy and courage. Take action even when you are afraid. Educate yourself as much as is possible. Challenges and inequalities like your life depend on it, because actually, it does!
