Is this mockery or anger?

Should we be outraged by the mockery of Sam Nzima's iconic 1976 photograph of a shaken Mbuyisa Makhubo, carrying an injured 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, while his sister Antoinette Sithole runs beside them?

Should we be offended by the picture for sullying the death of Pieterson, for making light of Makhubo's disappearance and for being insensitive to Sithole's trauma?

Should we be saddened by what June 16, Youth Day, has come to represent to the people depicted in the picture?

Or should we, perhaps, shrug off the image as the folly of youth?

What are we to make of the unidentified person who took the photograph, and the unidentified people shown in it?

Should we really be insulted or outraged? Interestingly, this is the question Unisa lecturer Dr Matthew Curr asked in a second-year English course, "Protest, Satire and Subversion".

Dealing with the subversion part of the course, Curr - examining a collection of graffiti from Nigel Rees's popular 1979 book, Graffiti Lives, OK - pondered: Is it hurtful to scrawl this on the wall: "Paraplegics stand up for your rights"? How would a recovering alcoholic feel about reading this: "Reality is an illusion produced by alcoholic deficiency"?

Once the initial shock, anger and disgust wore off, Curr encouraged students to look at the impulse behind such graffiti.

Curr wrote: "Graffiti, like satire in many other forms, charts the tension between the visible tip of society's conformist iceberg and the huge, unseen, unheard and not necessarily happy mass below. In many ways the need to spray paint a message . is the unconscious, unheard 'other' voice of society."

Curr's insight draws our attention to the many layers of graffiti. "Paraplegics stand up for your rights" is also an expression of anger at a society that is often uncaring and remote, or too preoccupied with the rights of the "abled" and treats the rights and needs of the disabled as secondary to those of the "abled". But the disabled are our families, we work with them, they are our friends, they are us, not separate from us.

It is in this light that the parody of Nzima's picture should be viewed.

Beyond its intention to shock - even offend - it is a picture of a brooding youth, a generation stewing in drug addiction, alcohol abuse and unemployment.

More importantly, it is an expression of disgust at the self-righteousness of those who think that the 1976 uprisings should be a motivator for the youth of today.

The picture is an expression of the hopelessness that many of our young people feel, the expression of a youth drowning in the freedom that offers them few opportunities to better their lives.

While the youth of 1976 faced the same challenges, fought the same enemy and shared a vision for education and South Africa, what binds our youth today?

Inequality?

With freedom from apartheid came the realisation by our youth that, depending on where you live and your family's resources, there are still different kinds of education to suit your position in society.

For this generation - the huge, unseen, unheard and not necessarily "happy" youth - Pieterson died in vain.