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TEDx Johannesburg – Are the “born frees” born to free fall?

Dion Chang was the final speaker to take to the stage at TEDxJohannesburg, and his talk was utterly fascinating. He asked whether the “born frees”, South African children born after 1994, are not born to free fall. He pointed out many depressing facts about South Africa to make his point, like the fact that 60% of our population are aged between 18 and 30, and 15% of that number are between 15 and 24, a situation that is only good for the country if there is sufficient education and plentiful jobs, which is not the case.

He went on to question what it is that makes South Africa so violent, and he shared some alarming truths that shed some light on the answer: life in South Africa is very hard for a large portion of the population.

He said young girls have a 1 in 2 chance of being raped; we have over 3 million AIDS orphans and counting; 8% of kids are being brought up in “skipped generation” households (being raised by grandparents), and 20% of youth come from households that are headed by children.

At such a young age many of our youth are exposed to anxiety and stresses that are usually the reserve of adults, and they are turning to drugs, alcohol, sex and gangs to find “some kind of escape”.

He went on to talk about how 60% of black South Africans are brought up without fathers, and he related that to an international study that showed that households with absent fathers breed more teenage pregnancies, dysfunction and crime.

And it’s only going to get worse: the cycle is being perpetuated.

In 2009, a survey was taken of young school girls getting pregnant, and the number was 45 000. The survey was re-taken in 2011, and that number had jumped to 95 000, which Chang says indicates that young South Africans are getting into a cycle of destructive coping mechanisms to an even greater extent.

The core problem, he says, is “broken family syndrome” that’s partly due to our country’s history, partly the fact that we live in an extremely patriarchal society, and partly outdated traditional customs that are blocking progress.

When young kids perceive that they have been abandoned by one or both parents, Chang says, that starts to scar them, giving them a different outlook and affecting deeply their personal relationships. And the problem with any emotional trauma is that to heal it requires that people relive it in order to make sense of it.

Where these problems are going to hit us, to an extent even greater than they have already according to Chang, is in our wallets. Investors won’t invest in the country because of the instability caused by the abundance of people but no jobs or education, and companies won’t have enough consumers earning money to buy all of the shiny things they have to sell. Even worse, right now 95% of SA’s population is being supported by the 5% that pays taxes, a situation that is not sustainable in the long term. Something has to be done, he says.

There is hope, though. Chang went on to talk about the interventions that are needed in order to stabilise the country. First, we must build a solid education system that ensures all kids who enrol in grade 1 make it through to grade 12, something that is not happening right now. Second, we must actively provide more support for women, as Chang says they are the glue currently holding South Africa together, supporting more people per capita than men do.

He finished off by saying that South Africa reached a political fork in 1994, but the fork the country now faces is a socio-political one and if we don’t address it, the kind of things that have happened in Egypt, Brazil and Turkey as a result of fed-up populations could happen here too.

And with that, TEDx Johannesburg 2013 came to a close.

 

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