The previous blog ended with a bold statement: gangs are gaining power in South Africa because they fulfil needs that society often neglects. This leads to an important question: if gangs are succeeding in this area, are schools failing? Unfortunately, they are, and for the same reasons. Both gangs and schools are
We keep asking the wrong question about South Africa. We ask why young people join gangs, why teenagers drink themselves stupid behind the school hall, why a fifteen-year-old in Manenberg or Hanover Park would trade his future for a corner and a gun. We ask as if the answer is mysterious. It
Ask a Grade 8 learner who she is, and she will tell you what she wears, what she watches, and who she sits with at break. Ask again, and she will run out of answers somewhere around the second sentence. This is not her failure. It is ours. We have built an
There is a sentence I have heard parents say to me, almost word-for-word, in different rooms and communities for the better part of my Life. It goes something like this: “I talk to my child all the time. I have no idea why she won’t open up to me.” I believe them.
A week ago, a three-part series was offered. Mattering, Formation, Adult Responsibility: three blogs, one argument, one closing call to the grown-ups in young people’s lives to stop diagnosing the youth and start examining ourselves. In the week since, we pondered the question, which many readers may have had and who may