Africa’s Youth: Barcelona or Death?

ON the occasion to mark Africa Day earlier this year, two African leaders spoke at different venues and on different continents.

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa spoke about the state of Africa in Hanoi at the Vietnam Institute of International Relations. The other, the first Prime Minister of Namibia, Dr Hage Geingob, spoke at a meeting in Swakopmund to mark the same occasion.Both these leaders have a lot in common: they are of the same generation, highly educated, experienced in both liberation politics as well as post-liberation government leadership.At some point, they would have or do represent a modicum of hope for the African continent in terms of leadership, in particular Thabo Mbeki as leader of Africa’s biggest economy and if I may add, liberal democracy.Unusually, their speeches to mark this occasion had the same beat: an undiluted expression of confidence in our collective future as Africans.For his part, Dr Geingob’s speech was a mixture of pragmatism on one hand – when he spoke about the need for the continent to deal with corruption and promote democracy – and anti-imperialist speak when he reiterates the point that it is better to mismanage your own affairs, rather than having somebody else doing it for you.The latter claim is highly contestable, but it warrants a discussion outside the purview of this one.President Mbeki’s tone was not different, even though he added an institutional touch to the discussion when he asserted that “there is increased unity and readiness to act for the betterment of the continent through the African Union”.This mobilising and somewhat pragmatic language is necessary and is relevant in the context of crafting a new future for Africa, in particular the role the youth has to be played in that process.However, I am not too sure if much of Africa’s youth is as confident about the fortunes of the continent as these leaders are.And I am somewhat less convinced that Africa’s youth is prepared to bargain and negotiate politically for a better continent.I argue this way because youth unemployment and lack of opportunities are pushing Africa’s youth into violence and on risky boat trips to the West in search of economic opportunities.In fact, a Senegalese friend related to me a while back that in Senegal, ‘Barca wala barsakh’ (‘Barcelona or death’) has become a common Wolof saying among the youth in villages and Dakar.Families save money and mortgage the lives of their sons on these boat trips in the hope that they would send money from Europe to support families back home.Paul Richards interprets the violence in Sierra Leone as issuing a far wider crisis affecting the youth in a declining patrimonial state that could not cater to its young population.The country’s forest resources, in high demand on the world market, became an issue of competition and violence between the state and rebels, and allowed marginalised youth to carve out a domain of alternative careers.For this tragic category of people, the adage of the ‘youth possessing the future’ or ‘having a whole life before them’ is vacuous.The fate of this category of youth is complex, but we should be harsher with the educated youth that should be the real agent of political and social change.Africa’s liberation struggle was largely the process of educated leaders articulating the demands of freedom.Similarly, it should be the moral duty of a generation of educated young leaders to articulate a different continent, not only within political parties, but also as progressive civil society actors.Yet, much of this generation has taken a zero-sum view of Africa through their progressive disengagement from politics.Even if we were to admit that in much of Africa, the generation that secured independence is blocking the path of the younger generation in political life and the state bureaucracy, this category of the youth does not hesitate to subsidise its future to a non-progressive generation of African leaders in return for office, tenders and jobs.In most modern industrial societies, generations are informally delineated, boundaries between young and old are fuzzy, and the category young often acquiring a curious prestige.Yet in Africa, young people are expected to defer to elders, access to power can only be gained through ritual transition and formal confirmation.It is such notions of leadership that should be under discussion and contested when it comes to affairs of the state.University students should play an increasing role in shaping ideologically the course of government action and aid civil society.Regimes in power created youth wings of the ruling party that were are not loath to exercise intimidating violence on opponents.Zimbabwe is a case in point.In some of the more stable countries, young people have either been co-opted or have disengaged dangerously from political life in pursuit of mostly economic ends.The youth wings of ruling parties, instead of acting as agents of ideological change, have not even tried to test their relative autonomy as actors who can shape social relations and power formations.To conclude, it should be emphasised that African youth must start to look at politics differently and not as a process in which age set the tone and agenda in state affairs.Politics and the demand for strong leadership are the starting points for changing Africa.If Africa’s youth continues to articulate its demands in the existing weak terms, ‘Barcelona or death’ will remain the ghastly solution for many years to come.* Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.He is currently on a UN research internship at the UN Headquarters, New York.The other, the first Prime Minister of Namibia, Dr Hage Geingob, spoke at a meeting in Swakopmund to mark the same occasion.Both these leaders have a lot in common: they are of the same generation, highly educated, experienced in both liberation politics as well as post-liberation government leadership.At some point, they would have or do represent a modicum of hope for the African continent in terms of leadership, in particular Thabo Mbeki as leader of Africa’s biggest economy and if I may add, liberal democracy. Unusually, their speeches to mark this occasion had the same beat: an undiluted expression of confidence in our collective future as Africans.For his part, Dr Geingob’s speech was a mixture of pragmatism on one hand – when he spoke about the need for the continent to deal with corruption and promote democracy – and anti-imperialist speak when he reiterates the point that it is better to mismanage your own affairs, rather than having somebody else doing it for you.The latter claim is highly contestable, but it warrants a discussion outside the purview of this one.President Mbeki’s tone was not different, even though he added an institutional touch to the discussion when he asserted that “there is increased unity and readiness to act for the betterment of the continent through the African Union”.This mobilising and somewhat pragmatic language is necessary and is relevant in the context of crafting a new future for Africa, in particular the role the youth has to be played in that process.However, I am not too sure if much of Africa’s youth is as confident about the fortunes of the continent as these leaders are.And I am somewhat less convinced that Africa’s youth is prepared to bargain and negotiate politically for a better continent.I argue this way because youth unemployment and lack of opportunities are pushing Africa’s youth into violence and on risky boat trips to the West in search of economic opportunities.In fact, a Senegalese friend related to me a while back that in Senegal, ‘Barca wala barsakh’ (‘Barcelona or death’) has become a common Wolof saying among the youth in villages and Dakar.Families save money and mortgage the lives of their sons on these boat trips in the hope that they would send money from Europe to support families back home.Paul Richards interprets the violence in Sierra Leone as issuing a far wider crisis affecting the youth in a declining patrimonial state that could not cater to its young population.The country’s forest resources, in high demand on the world market, became an issue of competition and violence between the state and rebels, and allowed marginalised youth to carve out a domain of alternative careers.For this tragic category of people, the adage of the ‘youth possessing the future’ or ‘having a whole life before them’ is vacuous.The fate of this category of youth is complex, but we should be harsher with the educated youth that should be the real agent of political and social change.Africa’s liberation struggle was largely the process of educated leaders articulating the demands of freedom.Similarly, it should be the moral duty of a generation of educated young leaders to articulate a different continent, not only within political parties, but also as progressive civil society actors.Yet, much of this generation has taken a zero-sum view of Africa through their progressive disengagement from politics.Even if we were to admit that in much of Africa, the generation that secured independence is blocking the path of the younger generation in political life and the state bureaucracy, this category of the youth does not hesitate to subsidise its future to a non-progressive generation of African leaders in return for office, tenders and jobs.In most modern industrial societies, generations are informally delineated, boundaries between young and old are fuzzy, and the category young often acquiring a curious prestige.Yet in Africa, young people are expected to defer to elders, access to power can only be gained through ritual transition and formal confirmation.It is such notions of leadership that should be under discussion and contested when it comes to affairs of the state.University students should play an increasing role in shaping ideologically the course of government action and aid civil society.Regimes in power created youth wings of the ruling party that were are not loath to exercise intimidating violence on opponents.Zimbabwe is a case in point.In some of the more stable countries, young people have either been co-opted or have disengaged dangerously from political life in pursuit of mostly economic ends.The youth wings of ruling parties, instead of acting as agents of ideological change, have not even tried to test their relative autonomy as actors who can shape social relations and power formations.To conclude, it should be emphasised that African youth must start to look at politics differently and not as a process in which age set the tone and agenda in state affairs.Politics and the demand for strong leadership are the starting points for changing Africa.If Africa’s youth continues to articulate its demands in the existing weak terms, ‘Barcelona or death’ will remain the ghastly solution for many years to come. * Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari is a PhD fellow in political science at the University of Paris- Panthéon Sorbonne, France.He is currently on a UN research internship at the UN Headquarters, New York.