15 April 2044. After 8 years of struggle through university and the never ending night studies, here I am, back at home with my two little brothers, our financial state worse than ever. My mother had high hopes that I would take them out of this ineffable life. A life filled with despair and hunger for joy. It has always been my ultimate goal to liberate my family from the endeavours of our corrupt society.
After basically 8 years of meticulous work, here I am stuck in this shack without a job, without a plan. I don’t believe I have a certain future to look forward to anymore. I have become another statistic to the failed stories of university students in our country. All because of corruption and exploitation of power, the people in power have traded liberty for wealth and we ended up losing both. Education has become a petty, insignificant factor to our community. Whether you get employed or not, is determined by whom you are related to and who you know, or how much of your dignity you are willing to lose.
We’ve had countless people occupy the presidential seat. It’s also become one of the many tittles which have lost value. People now buy the presidency; any prosperous being with gold to flaunt can be president. Same goes to jobs and employment in our depraved state of South Africa, which has become more than just a contentious issue. We live in a world where qualifications are trivial and negligible. The government has obfuscated our employment system to try and conceal its taints. We are left assailable with nothing to shield ourselves with, vulnerable to our deadening society.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Those were the words of the late Dr Nelson Mandela.
Funny how education has become nothing but a waste of time. Education didn’t help me change the world or even my world. All it did was give me false hope, it turned me into a joke to the whole community. Back in the early grades of high school my teacher used to say, “Mduduzi, education is the only road to success.”
Words to live by but my question now is: Is success sitting at home with high qualifications and being unable to find a job? Because really that’s all education has brought me. The youth has even turned its back on education because it has no hope. All those beautiful big buildings which were once a lively place every school day have now turned to ghost towns. I’m ashamed of even calling myself a graduate in the streets, because I’m no different than a person who dropped out in high school.
The forever transitioning man-made disease that is corruption has affected all areas of growth and prosperity in our economy. From the suburbs to the township, it’s everywhere. It has reached a point whereby it’s become the norm in my society. My people, the African people are now all followers of this unjudicial system. But what can they do with so little power in their possession, nothing but follow. Well I won’t. It’s time we stood up and rebelled against this.
Blood? Blood on the streets has built this country when it was completely broken, broken by a system no different than the one we live under today. The only difference between these two systems is that there was hope for a black child back then. Today things are, well… what’s that word again? …arduous.
It’s really incomprehensible how one choses to sit peacefully whilst his country slowly perishes into the thin air. Why sit around and cry over spilt milk, asking what could have or could have not when you can take a stand like the heroes, the legends that used to walk on these great lands of beautiful Africa? Here I stand my oppressors, prepared to fight against my idle lifestyle, a life without thrills but empty promises.
I sometimes wish I was an eagle, the great bird of Africa. Flying high in the sky, with sharp eyes concentrated on the depressing sights of my society. Dear God, if you are reading this, I only ask that you bring about tranquillity to my people. If we can come together as one, joined as a single entity, we can become a formidable nation. The only way forward is to fiercely counteract in a contrary direction that the system is taking us in. Why should our past haunt and sway us into the wrong direction? South Africa has had nothing but pain and agony to witness, hatred far beyond reasonable expression.
South Africa rise, shield yourself against your own demise. Let us strive to be wise, forget all the lies. Our country is great, let us start on a clean slate. Turn a blind eye to the rates, the ones which kept on deadening us as a nation. Now sounds the call to come together, through this cold weather and united we shall stand.