Sledga is a young man of 18 years old. Skillo is his twin brother. I know both of these boys only by their football nick-names. They are part of a group of young men that I regularly play football with. They, like the rest, are exceptionally talented and benign young men. Worryingly however they and a few other of the football boys have dropped out of high school and are now sitting and doing nothing.
I get thrown into deep worry when I consider the large number of youth in South Africa that completely lack direction. This is not just sad, it is in fact very dangerous. It is sad because without direction the human capacity (the life energy if you will) of large numbers of South African youth is going to waste. It is dangerous because young people (young men in particular) sitting idle are at risk of making poor life decisions. A felt lack of purpose is debilitating; it gives a young person a sense of meaninglessness and sanctions blatantly expedient behavior.
The sad truth is that there are simply not enough opportunities to grant every dis-enfranchised youth a sense of direction. A quick fix to the problem of a generation without direction is a practical impossibility. So what should we do with the youth that lack direction?
The most desirable strategy to employ seems to me to involve finding a way of cultivating the conditions in which the youth find their own opportunity. Ultimately this is the only solution I see. This is the only solution because of the particular nature of the problem. The root of the problem is to be found in the fact that we have forgotten the value of service. The failure that has afflicted the youth is a failure in intent.
Popular opinion makes us believe that what is good for a human being is to be found in getting something from the world. Most often the thing people seek to acquire is money. This belief that what is good lies in stuff we get from the world is the biggest monster our world currently faces and it is this that is debilitating our youth. Ultimately the youth are waiting, waiting for their material conditions to somehow change so they can get the things that will make theirs a good life. For most this wait has no end in sight and the longer they wait the more resentful and dangerous they become.
To try this situation around would require that we help the come to the realization that their happiness, security, power, and whatever else they deem to be good can be acquired by devoting all their capacity into making a 
contribution to the world. Essentially this amounts to making the point of one’s life what you give instead of what you get. If this change is effected in the intent of the youth of South Africa then the youth will pick themselves up and pick the nation up. They will endeavor and their endeavor will produce capacity, they will make themselves capable.