Maravi

‘Repair the damage you have done to the youths’

‘Repair the damage you have done to the youths’
By Editor
Mon 11 Jan. 2010, 04:00 CAT [117 Reads,

A lot of damage has been done to our young people.
As John Phiri, the executive director of Global Justice Zambia, has correctly observed, instead of attracting our young people to high heights, our politicians have dragged them to very low depths.

What they are being told or shown is a society of wolves where greed and vanity is the order of the day. What they are being shown every day is the culture and practice of nchekelako. In everything they do, our young people have been taught to look for what is their cut in it. Public service, selfless service to humanity is not something that is being emphasised to our young people.

We are not teaching them that money is not everything; that there is something more powerful than money, and that is consciousness. Those who have put money to be everything have little patriotism because by nature they have no country. Their country is where they make the most money, they go where they earn more.

Of course, we would like our young people to be internationalists, but without ceasing to be patriots. They should be taught to fulfil their internationalist duty, their duty to humanity wherever necessary, and they should also fulfil their duty toward their own people. Life - we mean meaningful life - is not simply about the self or about 'what's my cut, nchekelako'. That's the kind of young people we want to bring up in our country. Our young people must undertake this mission, they have an opportunity to form people like that and with that kind of consciousness. This lust for gain that we are inculcating in our young people is very dangerous.

We are destroying or damaging our young people. We need to start teaching our young people the need for them to work for the establishment of a more just, fair and humane society full of love and solidarity. We should teach them to start feeling on their own bodies, in their own hearts the injustices committed against others. We should teach them to tremble with indignation whenever and wherever an injustice is committed against anyone.

We are concerned about the issues that have been raised by Phiri because there is a sort of chain of events here. For if good ideas foster other good ideas, bad things can foster, on the other hand, other bad things.

We must search for more just, fair and humane formulas to solve our problems, because before we realise it, formulas full of greed and vanity used out of expedience may corrupt us, contaminate our consciousness. Virtue must be nourished but vice springs up spontaneously like weeds and grows by itself. We must bear that in mind. If we do otherwise, while nourishing virtue, we are simultaneously paving the way for vice. That's the reality we must not lose sight of.

We could say that there is one task more important than all others for our politicians, and that is their work in developing a more humane consciousness among our young people. And that is something vital, absolutely vital, of decisive importance. Mass training of our young people in such principles - the principles of justice, fairness, humaneness, solidarity - requires systematic work.

This is very important because all over the world, it is young people who are actually involving themselves in the struggle to eliminate injustice, unfairness and the degradation of human beings. They are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and the necessity to eliminate the unfair, unjust and inhuman conditions that exist.

As Phiri has pointed out, it is not fair to teach our young people to be irresponsible and reward them for engaging in political violence and hooliganism on behalf of our politicians.

Our young people are increasingly being told how to hate, and not how to love their neighbour who may belong to a different political party, religion or tribe. And when the time comes they are intoxicated with alcohol and used in violent political acts. That's all they teach our young people and use them in. We don't favour violence. Everybody should be encouraged to reach their objectives peacefully. But it's difficult to teach only one group non-violence if their opponents, politically or otherwise, are not being taught by anyone to be non-violent.

There is also the issue of ignorance and greed. If all our young people were properly educated - by properly educated, we mean given a true picture of every human being and their worth - we think many of our young people would refuse to be used in violent schemes against their neighbours, they would be more tolerant of others. If this is done their intolerance would be at least partially negated. Also, their feelings of who they are in relation to others would be replaced by a balanced knowledge of themselves. They would feel more like human beings, in a society of human beings.

So it takes education to eliminate all these things. And just because we have colleges and universities doesn't mean we have education because these can skilfully be used to miseducate. Some of the politicians behind the violence we see every day are very highly educated.

Let us teach our young people to be better human beings and citizens of their country. But the problem is most of our politicians are not good human beings and good citizens themselves and as such they cannot teach others what they themselves don't know, don't practice. And all their talk about peace and this and that is nothing but political rhetoric and petty words. We say this because the same politicians can be talking about peace, stability and love in the morning but in the evening they are plotting violence and mobilising young people to go and attack their political opponents.

It is not possible for these politicians to call our young people to virtues which they themselves do not make an effort to practice. And for this reason we need our politicians to respect themselves and to be exemplary in their daily lives. The appeal for fairness, justice, peace and non-violence should also be extended to them because they are the worst culprits.

As for our young people, one of the first things we think they should learn how to do is to see things for themselves, listen for themselves and think for themselves. Then they can come to intelligent decisions for themselves. They shouldn't run away and try to make themselves the servants of those who are depriving them of their humanity. They are their enemies and they should fight them and in the end they will get their humanity back.

This country is theirs, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is theirs, it belongs to the young people. And our hope for the future of our country should accordingly be placed in them because the world belongs to them; Zambia's future belongs to them. That's why we must constantly carry on lively and effective political education among our young people and should always tell them the truth about the difficulties that crop up and discuss with them how to surmount these difficulties.

Our young people are the most active and vital force of our nation. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking. This is especially so in the era of democracy. We hope all our politicians will help and work with our young people and go into the question of bringing into full play their energy.

Zambia must care for her young people and show concern for the growth of the younger generation. Full attention must be paid to everything they do. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of fairness, justice, humaneness and compassion.

Our people seek their development and progress and their growth in humanity, through the incorporation and participation of everyone. For this reason, no sector should reserve to itself exclusively the carrying out of political, cultural, economic or spiritual matters.

Those who possess the power of decision-making must exercise it in communion with the desires and options of the whole community, of the whole nation. In order that this integration responds to the nature of all our people, it must incorporate the values that are appropriate to all and everyone, without exception.

In saying all this, we count upon elements and criteria that are profoundly human and essentially Christian, an innate sense of the dignity of all, a predilection for fraternity and hospitality, a recognition of young people and their irreplaceable function in the society, a wise sense of life and death.

Our young people constitute the most numerous group in the population of our country and show themselves to be a new social body with their own ideas and values desiring to create a more just, fair and humane society. The youthful presence is a positive contribution that must be incorporated into society.

We must involve the young people themselves in shaping their own destiny, the destiny of their country. A nation which values its future affords the highest priority to providing all its young people with opportunities for participating in the running of the affairs of their country. And this participation is not about intoxicating young people with Chibuku and tujilijili and then unleashing them on violent missions against political opponents.

We agree with Phiri about the need for our politicians to urgently start repairing the damage they have done to our young people. They have not been the light that our young people need to see in them, but the darkness that has blinded their vision. This needs to be urgently changed or the future of our country is doomed.

Labels: JOHN PHIRI, YOUTHS

posted by MrK @ 7:31 AM