By Victor Angula | Editor’s Comment |

There is nothing as dangerous as an unemployed young man. There is just a thin line between an unemployed youth and a criminal.

Namibia’s unemployment rate is officially pegged at 34,7%. While youth unemployment rate is said that it stood at 46% in 2018.

So that with the Covid-19 situation on our hands then the youth unemployment figure must have shot up above 60% this year.

Such high unemployment is a dangerous thing. It’s a serious threat to the peace and stability of our beloved country.

People will engage in all kinds of nuisance such as creating political instability or engaging in civil war if they don’t have 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 is 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.

Towns and societies are built through the energy and sweat of young people; and societies are also destroyed by the energy of young people if the energy finds no exit through productive living.

Academics and scholars, democrats and philosophers (if we have any) must have sleepless nights as a result of this unemployment.