Unemployment is not a joke
By Victor Angula |
It gets to seem like the situation of youth unemployment is being taken like a joke. As if people are just watching a movie.
This is not a movie but a real ticking time bomb people are watching. It’s something that has dire consequences for everyone who calls him or herself a Namibian.
This country is sitting precariously on the shoulders of this generation’s poor young people.
Political leaders and leaders of economic institutions must realise this sooner rather than later or else it will be too late. Start doing something now to create jobs, and to support those who are creating jobs. And to think of nothing else but jobs, jobs, jobs.
Jobs are that critical. Without productive employment even life itself becomes meaningless.
A human being’s worth is expressed and seen through his or her work. Everyone has wondered as to why Africans are prone to fighting and engaging in all sorts of political buffoonery if not complete baboonery, but nobody points to the fact that high unemployment is more an ingredient for disaster than anything.
Especially for young men jobs are an important thing. Young men don’t want to waste their youthfulness in unemployment. The energy of young men will come out through violent means if there is no work for them to do.
And come out it must. The energy of young people must come out. It must come out through violent conflicts or through sexual promiscuity. If the society’s politics and economic system are unable or unwilling to let the energy of young people to come out through productive labour, then the energy must come out through other means, means which certainly can’t build society.
The energy of young people cannot remain trapped in them until they wobble down in old-age towards the grave. Either they die while young through violent behaviour (which could be civil war or tribal war or petty criminal conduct) or through sexually transmitted sicknesses.
Countries are built through the energy and sweat of young people; and countries are also destroyed by the energy of young people if the energy finds no exit through productive living.
Namibia’s political leaders and business leaders must just create employment opportunities if they don’t want the energy of young people to become a curse rather than a blessing.
This is not a joke. I don’t write jokes. This is a serious threat we are facing as a nation.
– Victor Angula is the editor of Omutumwa News Online. He is also the author of several books, including “The Job at State House”, “How to Do the Job at Local Government”, “The Valley of Honey and Blood”, all available as ebooks on amazon.com.
