Dr Robert ‘Mugabe’ Ngwenya urges young people to take their rightful place in leadership and not to entrust their future in the hands of the old guard.
Innovation is the preserve of the youth. The challenges of the future require a new streak of thought that reside in the mind of the young.
The fourth industrial revolution is predicated on the response that the young mind will provide us. They have fought and still fight for Free education purely because they want to be equipped and ready to confront the challenges brought by technology. It has become a known fact that the world has its finger on a fast forward button and the young people must, in education, innovation and leadership adapt and generate new knowledge so as to keep pace with the fast developing world around them.
Denying young people to lead is tantamount to destroying them and causing them to lag behind while the world progresses.
When political infighting gave birth to the destruction of a preparatory political leader school called the Youth League, as the elders celebrated their success in silencing the voice of the youth, little did they know that they were in fact creating a market for those who manufacture nyaope and all other forms of drugs. Little did they realize that the young will be so disgruntled that all they will do would be to give in to the world of alcohol, fast cars and sex. That the young would develop less interest in politics, their environment and the well being of others.
Young people began not to take responsibility of the rot happening around them for they believed it is not of their making but that of the old who refuse to hand baton of leadership.
Not only must young people elect young people to lead, they must unite and demand what is fully their natural right, a right nature gives to all living species, humans included. It is a defiance of nature, it is going against nature to deny young people to lead themselves and prepare for their offspring.
The time has come that the youth must cease negotiating to lead in a country where they are a majority, the young must rise and demand never to be led by those who, because of age, cannot keep pace with the ever changing world. From now henceforth, any organization who fail to put forward its young to lead must be chastised and if possible, shunned and ignored.
If the energy young people have is not channeled and used for purpose, for the development of this country, it is the same unutilized energy that they will unwittingly use to hurl insults at government, it is the same energy they will use to commit heinous crimes, to rape and kill. Yes, it is the same energy they will to self-destruct thus destroying their very futures and that of their children.
As a young generation, we owe to our children to take leadership from those who refuse to surrender it to us. We must remind those who are holding on to it that it was given to them by those who came before them. They too must do like wise lest they die and leave us with nothing to build on.
Young people the time is now. The drug problem our young people have cannot be solved in a hospital ward and administration of sedatives. The drug problem can only be solved by young people seeing other young people being leaders in business, politics and in government. The time is now.
The time is now for young people to fight what severely affects them.. Inequality, unemployment and poverty. No 60 year old will do it in the way a young person will do it.
Let it be our generations mission to take power, use it to develop ourselves and those who will come after us. It is a mission we must dare not betray.
