Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi spoke about “immeasurable panic and misery in our schools” on Thursday as he listed the latest Covid-19 stats: 1,077 teachers and 1,977 pupils have tested positive in the province, and 20 schools have been closed. The good news is the government has undertaken to vaccinate all educators and staff as early as next month. We live in hope.
This does not take away from the fact that our youth is a generation in crisis. Just this week TimesLIVE published a series of essays of teenagers writing about their experiences of “learning under lockdown”, based on a book compiled by Jonathan Jansen and Emily O’Ryan. One of the saddest stories is that of Etaine Wilson, who failed some of her matric subjects last year. She submitted her essay to Jansen and O’Ryan, in which she wrote about her mother’s support and how her mother used her last pennies to buy Etaine data to study with. A year later, Wilson’s mom has died and she is now rewriting two matric subjects. If she had access to more resources and uninterrupted schooling last year, her situation might have been different.
Unicef, the UN agency responsible for humanitarian and developmental aid to children, this week warned that the problems of SA’s youth are just piling up. More than 55% of young people are anxious about the impact of Covid-19 on violence and poverty. Illness, death among family members and disrupted education have a huge effect on their mental health. They are turning to one another for support, which is great, but more than 60% do not seek formal help, an indication that we are doing something wrong. Either formal help is not easily accessible or too expensive, or mental health stigma has not been addressed.
The data on lost school hours from last year are common knowledge. Prof Martin Gustafsson, an adviser to the department, recently warned: “Decades into the future we are going to see, in a sense, a kind of lost generation. We are going to see people of a particular age with fewer post-school qualifications and lower earnings. This is almost like a war. This is something that will be felt for a long time, and we need to minimise that tragedy as far as we can.”
Our youth has also become victims of PPE corruption, state capture and empty state coffers. There are some who have qualified against all odds for university – their one chance at building a more prosperous future – but who do not have the means to fund their own studies. Their hope is pinned on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), but it faced a shortfall this year. We have published several stories about a delay in NSFAS allowances being paid out, resulting in students not being able to pay rent or buy learning materials. Even where our government has systems in place to support the younger generation, it often fails them.
Our leaders of today should not become so busy dealing with the Covid-19 devastation that they forget to support tomorrow’s leaders. Today we can shake our heads about a generation in crisis, but a few years from now our country will be paying a high price.
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