Culled from digivarsity.

By Alban Pillay

Shallow Much?

It was June 16th, 1976. In the heart of Soweto they gathered. All in uniform, as any soldier is at a time of war, except these were school children. Gathered together in the thousands, they prepared to march. Armed with nothing more than a few signs, they took the street. The cause? They had had enough of the Bantu education system implemented by Apartheid laws, more specifically, being made to learn Afrikaans. They marched, not knowing how important their action would be nor how iconic they would become.

Fast forward to 2013. Instead of freedom fighters we have ‘cheese boys’. Instead of intellectuals we have ‘izikhothane’ (you’re gonna cringe). The youth of South Africa is in decay, getting worse by the day it would seem (yeah, I said it). Let’s start with the izikhotane’s, basically teens who form cliques under the premise they are richer than others, so rich in fact that rival ‘skothane’ crews get together to have burn battles, where for example, one with start by saying “I’m so rich a Blackberry means nothing me” and will proceed to smash it into the ground. This continues with expensive items of clothing, gadgets, whatever you can think of that carries status being destroyed. Trust me, I wish I was making this up, sadly not.

Today’s hot trend on Twitter was Mr. Price, a popular
clothing store in South Africa, known for its affordability. The topic of discussion? That if you buy clothes from Mr. Price, you’re poor. It summed up the shallowness of the emerging youth for me, in a country when most are failing school and education standards are just disgusting, the youth it seems have accepted their hopelessness and “just wanna have fun.”

I blame MTV.

In the end, I’ve never been one to complain when someone else throws their life away, I see it as an opening in the race. After all, those of us who aim and attain success will always need someone to keep our gardens in shape and our houses clean.

@albanorien

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