Are we ready to vote for a 25-year-old to be the president of SA? If your instinct answer is no, before knowing anything about such a person other than their age, it is worth asking what inherent biases we hold and presuppositions we make about young people that make their age a disqualifier for political leadership.
By the time a person is 25 they have had enough time to get a master's degree, have started a business, become a parent or led in community activism. There are 25-year-olds who have travelled extensively, read widely, invented new products and have shown extraordinary leadership. There are people who by 25 implemented ideas that have changed the world. Perhaps, it's not that young people are not ready to lead, but that we are not ready to be led by young people.
Political leadership in Africa is notoriously old. While over 60% of Africa’s population is younger than 36 years old, over 90% of its political leaders are over 36. If representation truly matters in a democracy, the lack of youth representation in political leaders is a sign of failure we need to confront. We must interrogate why we have become comfortable dismissing young people as lacking experience to lead today, while we celebrate political leaders of previous generations like Steve Bantu Biko, Thomas Sankara, Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Solomon Mahlangu, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Robert Mugabe and many others who led political movements in their 20s and 30s in very challenging circumstances and affected great change.
From activists to presidents, young leaders emerged and led to create the future Africa they believed in. The problem was that once in leadership many of Africa's great leaders stayed in leadership into old age, not making room for new generations of leaders to emerge.
We have incumbent presidents and ministers, still in political offices today, who saw themselves as competent enough to lead politically over 30 years ago as young people but today participate in practices that gatekeep young people out of political positions of the same influence they held then on the basis of experience rather than competence.
Age is not a guarantee that people will be good leaders. This is as true for old people as it is for young people. Young people should not lead because they are young, but when we disqualify young people from leading because due to age we essentially create a default that suggests older people should lead because they are old rather than making the leadership question about what skills, talents, abilities and unique contributions leaders could make.
If age is not an automatic qualifier to lead, why make a case to let youth lead Africa and particularly SA into a better future? Young leaders arguably provide unique opportunities and positionality that could add value to our political landscape.
First, representation. Like liberation movements of the past, young people often swell the ranks of people willing to signal and demand change. Young people are disproportionately affected by problems faced in our society and thus their understanding of the issues is often very clear, specific and urgent.
For young people in a democratic era seeing leaders emerge who they can identify with and who they believe understand their struggles can only build solidarity and confidence in a population that is fast losing faith in politics and governance.
Second, vision. While it’s not impossible to conceive of and plan for development of a society you may not experience, knowing that your life and livelihood is partly at stake when casting vision means that a young leader has more to gain from success and infinitely more to lose from failure.
Finally, innovation and adaptability. As the pace of change in the world increases having the perspectives of younger people helps us prepare better and adapt quicker to societal change. The problem with long-term experience is that it can also stifle change. Sometimes the level of change needed means that you cannot put new wine into old skins.
Every generation uniquely brings a new perspective and a willingness to break with old traditions that societies can benefit from. In SA we increasingly hear calls for young people to lead in civil society, business and academia. Every year we produce lists that celebrate youth pioneering in their fields and ululate watching graduates donning their gowns as they attain master's and PhD degrees.
It is time that we make the same call to leadership to those young people to lead in politics and determine that when they step up that we are ready celebrate, support and be led by them.
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