Finding the rightful place for our youths in today's society: the case of Max vs Innocent

In our world today, science, technology and society are undergoing dramatic changes. The rapid increase of knowledge in a wide range of disciplines is triggering off scientific and technological developments that deeply affect our lives and transform our culture. Innovations in many fields, for instance, in information and communication technology have led to what is now called the “knowledge society”. Knowledge is becoming the key resource in our societies and a central factor in political, social and economic decision making. It is however, saddening to see a dearth in intellectual discourse and knowledge based dialogue as a process social cohesion especially among young people. 

Ideally, this should have been a time for many of our young people to read and acquire knowledge about the science and technology of nuclear technology, robotics, android development, android applications, financial modeling, HIV vaccines, environmental protection, Climate Change, medicine etc and make the results of such discoveries as a basis for sound debate and decision making. However, this seems not to be the case for many young people in our country.

Recently, two separate amateur videos went viral on social media featuring youths from two known political parties challenging each other to a boxing bout at Mulungushi Conference Centre after a verbal exchange. There is no doubt that these videos set Zambian social media alight with many likes, comments and tags. This brought some few thoughts to my mind; Could this be why we have more gymnasiums in our communities than public libraries, more mushrooming taverns and shebeens than institutionalized school systems, more alcohol sales than the annual turnovers of all water utility companies put together etc? What about our political parties, are they engaging these youths who constitute the majority of their members in meaningful programs to prepare them for key leadership roles of the country? What is even worrying is to see youths who are supposed to be key players in the decision making process of our country to begin showing signs of intellectual dwarfism and suffocation.  This is what the videos of these two youths reflected, a society that has lost sense of its direction.

Instead, this should be time to engage deep intellectual fights, fights for and against ideas and not physical fights or violence against each other. This is the time for reading and discovering new knowledge and ideas to improve the lives of people in communities. Our country today needs charismatic and honest young men in politics who can motivate and inspire their fellow youths to change the status quo. Our current status, where youths in political parties are only used as agents of political mayhem is unsustainable and detrimental to the future of this country with its great potential. Sadly enough, the few intelligent men and women who can actualize the Zambian ideals are also avoiding politics because of the ‘dirty’ tag that has for a long time been attached to it. There is need for young people to come out of wherever they are and take on the mantle of leadership in our society. Many people in our society today still think nation building and the political process of decision making are the exclusive preserve of the old people and as such youths should not be given a chance. Perhaps, such perception of youths explains why youths are merely said to be leaders of tomorrow, and not now.

This is the unfortunate mind-set that seems to have informed or misinformed the pattern of successive national leadership in our country. This cliché in some way has sedated many youths and created in them a sense of reluctance in participating and taking up leadership roles and responsibilities that can help in the social, economic and political transformation of our country.

Although the definition of youth varies from culture to culture, community-to-community and country-to-country, the United Nations defines youth as a male or female aged between 15 and 24 years, whilst Commonwealth Youth Programme defines youth as a male or female aged between 15 and 29 years. The 2006 National Youth Policy defined a youth as a male or female person aged between 18 and 35 years. However, the 2015 National Youth Policy for Zambia defines a youth as a male or female person aged between 15 and 35 years and statistically constitute the majority in the population of our country.

However, when it comes to youths taking up leadership and decision making positions at the different levels of our communities, the majority of youths are relegated to the gutter and the inferior positions where they cannot make any meaningful impact in the decision-making processes of many social and political organizations or institutions in our country. This exclusion in the decision making process of our society is part of the problem facing many youth and has incapacitated many of them not to fully partake in issues of nation building and development. However, in a broader sense, youth should refer to people who have the energy, drive, vigor and enthusiasm to get things done. It is a state of mind not a function of age, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over cowardice and an unquenchable appetite for progressive reasoning and not conduits for social instability and violence.