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Youth Month: What lessons can the younger generation of nurses learn from the youth of 1976?
By Nkululeko Mapaila
June is known as the Youth Month in socio-political sphere, being remembered by the June 16, Soweto Uprising in 1976 (the first sign of black unrest in Soweto schools was noticed by government authorities on 4 June as students were unhappy about being compelled to use Afrikaans as medium of instruction in 50% of subjects in secondary schools). Eight days later Cde Tsietsi Mashinini led a peaceful protest of students in Soweto which turned violent as the apartheid police unleashed live ammunition on unarmed students and in the process killing learners like Hector Peterson.
What lessons can the younger generation of nurses learn from the heroic and yet tragic events of June 16 Soweto Uprising? Can student nurses play a leading role in the transformation of the nursing profession? Has a second layer of a nursing been laid in the past 21 years in South Africa? These questions are posed in order to close the gap that seems to exist between 1st and 3rd layer in the nursing profession. DENOSA through the DENOSA Learner Movement should play an active role in bridging the gap and furthermore developing a young nursing cadre.
The society which does not take care of its youth has no future; it can only be through youth that South Africans can sustain a long and healthy lives. It can only be through the Learner Movement that DENOSA will endure a long and successful life in advancing the nursing profession.
The South African society needs a young nursing cadre who will therefore be committed to serve the South Africans selflessly and with diligence. We need to develop a young nursing cadre with the mind-set of Tsietsi Mashinini in serving South Africa. A young nursing cadre who will lead the nursing revolution, emancipation of the nursing profession from the claws of vultures who reduced it to a doormat. We further need the young nursing cadre who will be a leading force in bridging the gap with the two aspects of trade unionism and professionalism; and a young nursing cadre who will be in the forefront of the fight against white monopoly capital in defence of the working class and the poor.
During youth month and beyond, we need to see young nurses in the forefront resolving the social ills within our communities. We need to see more young people actively participating in particular on the economic sector of the country.
We need young people to fight against the neoliberal policies which are manufactured to exploit them like the youth wage subsidy. We need to see more genuine opportunities afforded to the youth, with the nursing college revitalizing programme being implemented as it will create more access and success in nursing colleges.
We need to see the ratio of students accessing entry into nursing colleges being equal as students who are graduating from nursing colleges. We need to see government playing a supportive role in ensuring that a young nursing cadre does not struggle to get employment.
The Youth month should instigate a change in mind-set of many young nurses across in order to claim the nursing profession as their very own. We need to see young nurses aspiring to become academics within the nursing profession. Young nursing cadre
seize the day. Carpe Diem
Aluta Academica Continua
Mapaila is Secretary of DENOSA National Learner Movement
