Welcome

Over the last month the DA Youth embarked on a campaign to set out our vision for the future of South Africa. Termed ‘In our future’ the campaign saw the release of a series of posters on campuses, social media and on the campaign website www.inourfuture.co.za that illustrate our dreams and aspirations for the kind of South Africa we want to live in.

Through the campaign we aimed to highlight the following key themes:
• Tolerance for everyone, even if their life choices are different from our own,
• The opportunity for anyone and everyone with talent and dedication to realise their dreams no matter their background, and,
• Respect for the Constitution as the ultimate law in South Africa.

In our last newsletter we shared the launch of the first poster in the series, ‘In our future you won’t beg for opportunities’. This month we would like to share the rest of the posters in this highly successful series with you.

Regards



Makashule Gana
Federal Youth Leader

In our future she will be the CEO of her own company



This poster serves to illustrate our vision of a country in which any and every South African with the talent and dedication to improve their lives is supported in doing so. There are currently 4.5 million unemployed people in South Africa, with 72% of them younger than 34.

The poster highlights entrepreneurship as one of the key ways to help young people achieve economic independence, and was launched at the site of one of our business plan competition finalist’s projects, Lavender in Lavender Hill. This social entrepreneurship project is a prime example of what entrepreneurship can do for the development of South African communities.

With the recent announcement that 440 000 small businesses in South Africa have failed in the last five years, it is becoming increasingly vital for government to ensure entrepreneurs are given adequate support.

In our future their skin colour won’t determine their success



This image highlights our vision of a future in which the melanin content of a person’s skin will have no bearing on the opportunities they are given.

Sadly, in contrast to this vision, South Africa today is a place in which race still plays a part in an individual’s prospects. As the DA Youth, we are striving towards a future in which every individual with talent and dedication, no matter their skin colour or background, has the same chance at building a better life for themselves.

This poster was launched at the University of Cape Town, where a debate is currently raging about their race-based admissions policy. The DA Students Organisation asserts that we should move away from artificially predetermined racial outcomes towards equality of opportunity in order to realize genuine redress.

In our future the Constitution will reign supreme



We launched this poster by staging a sit-in at Constitution Hill, through which we aimed to highlight the current threats posed to the Constitution and to assert our commitment to upholding it at all costs as the supreme law of our land.

In the DA’s future, the Constitution will reign supreme as the ultimate law in South Africa. There will be no person or body above that law, and it will be fiercely protected.

The current threats to the Constitution are starkly illustrated by the policy document released recently by the ANC. This document, which proposes a number of Constitutional amendments, represents the largest assault on the Constitution witnessed in our country to date and is a complete derogation of the principles of constitutional democracy. It should be deeply concerning to every South African who values post-Apartheid South Africa.

In our future they will be free to love without fear



The final poster in the series features prominent LGBTI rights activist Ndumie Funda and her partner, with the tagline ‘In our future they will be free to love without fear’. The poster is designed to highlight both her and many thousands of openly lesbian women’s struggle to simply live their daily lives without fear of victimization. No more starkly were the challenges that these women face illustrated than in the recent court case of Zoliswa Nkonyana, who was brutally murdered in Khayelitsha because her choice of partner.

According to research more than 10 lesbians are subject to ‘corrective rape’ both by individuals and gangs every week in Cape Town alone. Over the last ten years 31 lesbians have allegedly been murdered because of their sexuality.

As well as highlighting this serious issue, the poster also makes a statement about the kind of future that the DA Youth envisages for South Africa, namely one in which there is tolerance and acceptance of every individual, even if their life choices are different from our own.