Township youth say no major party may have what it takes to secure their future

Esethu Plaatjie, 26, and Sindisa Monakali, 23, are both registered to vote on 8 May 2019. But both say they do not yet know which party will win their support. They will decide on the morning of the elections.

“It’s difficult to know which political party to vote for,” says Plaatjie. “To almost all the key questions, they don’t have an answer.”

Both men were born and bred in Khayelitsha, the Cape Town township where they still live. We are chatting in the Khayelitsha office of NGO Equal Education, where Monakali and Plaatjie run programmes to help South African youth mobilise to apply pressure to the government to fix the issues affecting the quality of the education they receive.

The nature of their work brings them into frequent contact with both provincial and national government – and has left them cynical about both institutions.

“It’s difficult to get hold of the DA government. The MEC of Education is never there to receive our demands,” says Plaatjie.

“The Western Cape remains the most unequal province in the country 25 years after democracy,” Monakali says, and rattles off a litany of problems.

The lack of social housing close to the centre of Cape Town tops his list, together with the unreliable and inadequate train service. Monakali claims that the provincial education department prioritises former Model C schools, and that unequal resource allocation is also evident in provincial policing, with the most experienced cops and technology like CCTV cameras reserved for affluent suburbs like Hout Bay.

“Even in leadership, the DA remains white-dominated,” Monakali finishes. “We see people [of colour] leaving the DA.”

Would an ANC government in power in the Western Cape perform better?

Both men laugh and shake their heads ruefully.

“I don’t think so, with all the corruption,” says Monakali. “They are just faction after faction. They governed this province before, and the DA has actually done better in terms of things like employment.”

Youth unemployment is a huge concern to both men, and neither is convinced that any major South African political party has a plausible plan to address the problem.

They agree that the issue of land will be decisive in the 2019 elections – but say that it’s unclear from the party manifestos which party actually intends to redistribute land.

The EFF, suggests Plaatjie, “shift from race to land to the economy. They are radical and vocal, but the membership at branch level don’t have a clue what the EFF is about.”

And in the Western Cape, they believe the EFF has gone about its campaigning in the wrong way.

“They have no buy-in from the coloured community!” says Monakali. “Don’t talk about land, talk about water and sanitation. Don’t send someone to the Cape Flats who can’t speak Afrikaans!”

Plaatjie adds: “And patriarchy, even within [EFF] leadership – that’s a big problem for them and they don’t want to touch it.”

“Boy’s club,” nods Monakali.

As for former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille, who has gone out alone with her Good party – “I don’t trust her. I’ll never trust her,” says Monakali firmly.

He says that most Cape Town township residents associate De Lille with the introduction of heavily rationed water during the drought, and accordingly feel a sense of injustice because “in the township, we are the people who most save water!”

Plaatjie’s summary of De Lille’s Good party: “They seem like an NGO more than a party.”

Later this afternoon, Plaatjie is due to run a workshop for Khayelitsha “Equalisers” – high school students being trained in activist techniques by Equal Education. At the moment, their campaign focuses on making schools safer.

We climb into a minibus with around 10 other young activists and drive through the township to Usasazo High School, where the workshop is taking place. On the drive over, I spot the only posters for the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party that I’ve seen in Cape Town, with Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim’s face beaming out above the slogan, “Equality, Work, Land”.

Usazaso High School was refurbished by Irish charity Mellon Educate in 2017, and for a township state school it’s in good nick.

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want can be a wonderful stroke of luck,” announces an optimistic slogan painted on a wall as you enter the school.

At least 100 high school students from different Khayelitsha schools have gathered for the Equal Education workshop, and the organisers have come prepared with multiple loaves of bread and bottles of Jive cooldrink.

Though the learners are largely drawn from Grades 9 to 11, it is not uncommon to find among them teens who are already old enough to vote in the upcoming elections.

Yet not all of them intend to exercise that right. 18-year-old Mzekelo, a Grade 11 student at Mathew Goniwe Memorial High School, tells me he is not going to vote.

“I don’t think the dominant political parties are what I’m looking for. I don’t think they’re fit to run the country,” he says.

Why not?

“The EFF is not disciplined enough. The ANC – it’s obvious!” Mzekelo says, laughing. “And the DA is just telling us what the ANC’s not doing, not what they are going to do.”

He says that most of his peers don’t care about politics at all. Mzekelo describes himself as different because he is a “growing activist” – an evolution he attributes to the influence of Equal Education.

Before he attended the NGO’s workshops, he says, “I didn’t know not being safe at school was an issue. I didn’t know things could be different.”

Mzekelo’s experience is not isolated. If there is a burgeoning political consciousness among the youth in townships like Khayelitsha, it appears to be largely as a result of the work of activists rather than politicians.

Monakali had said something similar, back in the office.

“The people who really know what is going on in this country are in the NGO sector,” he declared. “Politicians lose touch with people on the ground.” DM