Biko heir speaks her mind

Stop doing stupid things like fighting and give people what you promised.

That is basically what Mpho Biko said about the ANC as the party enters its second century.

From a 21st-century teenager's lips to the ANC's big ears.

And Mpho, as her surname suggests, is not just any teenager. She is the 18-year-old great-niece of Black Consciousness leader Steve Bantu Biko.

Mpho was one of the people City Press spoke to as part of its news special to mark the 100th anniversary of the ANC on January 8. The other stories in the special sort of faded into the background.

Mpho said boldly: "What I see are parties hanging onto the past really tightly and doing stupid things like fighting. I mean people don't have homes and you want to fight about Julius Malema?

"Seriously, just give people homes and fix everything you promised to fix."

We don't expect such words from a Biko. We expect her to have sucked in with her mother's milk all that is black and conscious.

We expect her to love, know and honour her great-uncle's and father's legacies by showing respect for former freedom fighters.

We expect her to know and carry the Biko political legacy with pride.

Yet all Mpho, who has just passed matric, wants to do is study architecture.

"I will not get into politics just because my name is Biko," she said.

In a manner and language that only a teen would have the guts to use to express her thoughts, Mpho succinctly summed up the attitude of her peers - and perhaps the pressure faced by today's youth, who have found a cause in fighting for nationalisation and redistribution of land.

She said her father "always tells me that, instead of watching TV and being on my cellphone all the time, I should be out there fighting for something that we believe in, just like his generation and my great-uncle Steve did.

"But we are not the same [as them]; things have changed and we are growing up in a completely different time and, you know, for a while we didn't get along because of our differences."

What this girl was saying made me uneasy, but relieved that she had said it.

Before we dismiss Mpho as a spoilt brat, we should remember American scientist, educator and inventor George Washington Carver's words: "How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these."

Here's a little tenderness for young Mpho: in a youthful way, she has captured the relationship between the young and the old leaders in the ruling party in present-day South Africa.

It is perhaps the pressure, the call, the expectation that the young should go out there and fight for something, in the same way the likes of the Bikos, the Mandelas and the Sisulus did, that is making it difficult for them to find their voices.

Mpho said: "The world has changed so much that if you are stuck in the past it's going to cause so many more problems, and no one wants rifts and arguments in the family."

Mpho might not be ready to take up arms and fight for something she cannot identify, but she does seem to know what has gone wrong with the ANC Youth League since her father's time.

There is no political party that represents her generation.