To be young, uneducated and black continues to be a curse in this country, even after the fall of apartheid. Statistics SA released damning figures this week that tell a painful story about our youth.Black youths endure the hardest life today. Statistician-general Pali Lehohla described it as a "cocktail of disaster".The biggest challenges holding back our young, mostly black, people is lack of skills and education.It is not surprising that so many of them are involved in crime.The situation is so dire for some that they have stopped looking for a job.We are sitting on a ticking time bomb and if measures are not taken to reverse this situation South Africa should brace itself for an unstable future.No government can expect stability and progress when most of its young people are reduced to aimlessly roaming the streets with nothing else to occupy them.It is a recipe for disaster when so many of the young, who should be pumping up our economy, lack education and skills.It is even more troubling that unemployment is on the rise and has a colour attached to it.Lehohla was blunt.He said it is twice as difficult for a black African or coloured graduate to get a job than for whites and Indians qualified at the same institution.These are the hard, cold facts we must internalise and deal with.The government must act urgently to reduce youth unemployment, especially among black Africans.Without education and sustainable employment the young people of this country face a bleak future.Only 38% of youths have matric, 1% have a university degree and about 4% have other tertiary qualifications.We must give meaning to our hard-won freedom...