South African Youth Activism, 1976–2026: Religious, Civic, and Economic Crosscurrents

Abstract

With the 1976 Soweto uprising serving as a point of departure for the current analysis, this article examines shifts, continuities, expansions, and retractions in confluences of youth religious and civic engagement and evolutions of that engagement during and since the latter apartheid era. It emphasizes points of intersection between this religious and political engagement, noting complementary aspects between the two, as well as factors that have impaired the formation of collective civic identity and socio-religious cohesiveness (including distortions deriving from legacies of racism and economic impoverishment). The impact of youth economic marginalization is also examined, both as a factor contributing to youth disillusionment with established institutional sectors and as an issue galvanizing social change-oriented activism among youth. This article draws on select quantitative and qualitative social data since 1976 that bear upon social attitudes and historical dynamics.

1. Introduction

From at least the 1960 Sharpeville uprising, youth were designated as a frontline of anti-apartheid activism. Youth frontline activism was further solidified by the 1976 uprising of thousands of youth in Soweto in defiance of the apartheid government’s imposition of Afrikaans as the language in which instructional activities would be conducted, with this activism imbued with sacred importance through the deaths of hundreds of student protestors slaughtered during the initial 16 June uprising and in subsequent weeks by government troops.

Almost two decades later, the 1994 democratic transition in South Africa marked the fulfillment of a generations-long struggle for genuine multiracial democracy and, presumably, the unleashing of the obstructed political power of the overwhelmingly black South African majority population.1 Given the numerical preponderance and political restiveness of black South African youth (and similarly of coloured and Indian youth), youth populations were viewed as particularly strategic to ongoing expansions and consolidations of black, coloured, and Indian political empowerment.2

Churches were another wellspring from which black politics had drawn, notably through the anti-apartheid activism of key clergy, such as Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Apostolic Faith Mission pastor Frank Chikane (who both served as General Secretaries of the South African Council of Churches during the height of anti-apartheid activism), and theologians, such as Takatso Mofokeng, Itumeleng Mosala, and Allan Boesak. These theologians and pastors offered critiques of racist Christian ideologies that effectively debunked Afrikaner intellectual legitimations of apartheid, while offering high profile support, as well, for community organizing and policy advocacy efforts.

Although South Africa’s youth sector and church sector have been key components, respectively, of an emergent majoritarian political empowerment, the political intersections and outgrowths of religion and youth culture have been under-analyzed. Much of the scholarship on South African youth has focused on their religious life (largely exclusive of its social ramifications) or on their social life (largely exclusive of its religious ramifications).

The present article emphasizes points of intersection between youth religious and political engagement, noting complementary aspects between the two (such as concerns within both spheres about communal obligations and wholeness), as well as factors that have impaired formations of collective civic identity and socio-religious cohesiveness (including distortions deriving from legacies of racism and economic impoverishment).

With the 1976 Soweto uprising serving as a watershed moment in South African youth activism, and as a point of departure for the current analysis, this article examines shifts, continuities, expansions, and retractions in youth religious and civic engagement since the latter apartheid period. The primary questions to be addressed are: (1) To what extent do black youth feel a sense of connection and identification with the primary social narratives and institutions within the New South Africa? (2) By what civic, religious, or practical performance standards are black youth evaluating their relationship to the trajectories of the New South Africa? (3) How have black youth differed across diversities of socio-cultural formation and location in their evaluations and responses to the priorities of the New South Africa? And (4) how might youth poverty circumstances (and levels of governmental responsiveness to youth economic urgencies) influence black youth attitudes and responses toward the trajectories of the New South Africa?

Drawing upon select quantitative and qualitative social data since 1976 that bear upon social attitudes and historical dynamics within South Africa, this article details troublingly low black youth confidence and trust in the institutional and leadership establishment within South Africa, but an ongoing hope and belief in South Africa’s promise—even if that genuinely New South Africa must be born alternatively out of their own social imaginings and resistance efforts.

2. Restive Youth and Insurgent Energies

Social change in South Africa has been dramatic in the 50 years since Soweto, most notably the country’s formal 1994 transition from a highly repressive system of white minority rule to a multi-racial democracy, where the electorate and elected officials have reflected the country’s racial make-up. But even as the country continues this notable transformation of its political structures, policies, and procedures, there are social sectors and social groups where progress has been far less obvious. The continuing marginality, uncertainty, and insecurity of black youth at many levels is a matter of particular concern.

African youth are at the center of the social challenges confronting South Africa but, apparently, they have served, too often, as a negative rather than an affirmative point of focus. As David Everatt has pointed out, the concept of “youth” has been politicized, “with an entire generation of South African youth since the 1980s caricatured and … widely portrayed as angry, amenable to, and available for, violence.” (Everatt 1994, pp. 1–2). Some have argued that it has been because of this characterization of youth (mostly black youth) as “lost” that youth development has been misread and mishandled within certain sectors (CASE 1993, p. 2; Everatt 1993, pp. 1–42; 2024b, pp. 190–203).

A 1993 study by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) outlined multiple categories of youth, such as “lost” (youth “who are deemed to be hopeless cases”), “marginalized” (youth “regarded as standing a chance of being saved”), “at risk” (youth “at risk of becoming marginalized or lost”), and “fine” (facing no obvious threats to their social wellbeing and stability) (CASE 1993, p. 2). According to the CASE study, South African youth are distributed as follows (Table 1) within these categories:

Table 1. South African youth social vulnerability.

	African	Coloured	Asian	White
Lost	6%	2%	1%	2%
Marginalized	30%	18%	13%	12%
At-risk	44%	46%	45%	41%
Fine	20%	34%	41%	45%

With these data in mind, F. Van Zyl Slabbert et al. reiterate the idea that there is a small segment of youth that may be correctly viewed as “lost” to any potential integration into the social mainstream. Slabbert et al. state: “There is no doubt that a proportion of South African youth (as well as children and adults) have been so negatively affected by decades of disadvantage and disempowerment that some are unable to play what would be regarded as a ‘normal’ role in society” (Slabbert et al. 1994, p. 20). Although this “lost youth” language was later abandoned, largely due to resistance by church leaders to the idea that anyone should be viewed as a lost cause, the numerical proportions of this category of socially distanced youth was concerning, nonetheless (Everatt 2024a, p. 2).

Steve Mokwena is among those, however, who attempt to redirect the criticisms away from the youth and onto the structures and systems that have undermined youth development. He states: “It is unacceptable to refer to the black youth as a ‘lost generation.’ This judgmental terminology masks the processes which have alienated black youth from the sources of wealth and power in this society” (Mokwena 1992, p. 39). It also conceals the fact, according to researchers affiliated with the Human Sciences Research Council’s South African Youth report, that many South African youth “place a high value on self-development, on family and kinship, on community development and on a peaceful and just society” (Slabbert et al. 1994, p. 19).

Becoming severely distanced from constructive social processes is obviously a distinct possibility for many South African youth. Among black youth, that possibility appears to exist for about eighty per cent of the youth. But, again, as Mokwena argues, the “problem” is not necessarily the youth but, rather, the context in which these youth are forced to develop—and it has been a context of black youth “alienation from sources of wealth and power” (Mokwena 1992).

Social and economic possibilities of South African youth have been constrained by major structural impairments, including massive black unemployment that is both an inheritance of apartheid-era policies and of the country’s somewhat peripheral place within the global economy. According to recent data, 62 percent of South African children are “experiencing multidimensional poverty,” with 51 percent living at a level of poverty defined by the provision of “basic essentials if people make food sacrifices” (“lower bound poverty), while 37 percent are below the food poverty line (“meaning that they were not getting enough nutrition”) (United Nations South Africa 2025; Hall 2025). By comparison, a 1975 case study of black South Africans in Soweto showed 45 percent of black children to be malnourished (Southern Africa Perspectives 1975). This unalleviated poverty represents a continuation of apartheid-era conditions.

The oppressiveness of youth poverty and a seemingly continued governmental callousness toward those conditions and toward steps that might empower youth are not altogether different from the apartheid-era conditions that led to the antigovernment youth insurgency evidenced in Sharpeville, Soweto, and other places during apartheid. Yet, despite the ongoing debilitations of poverty, a 2010 study pointed to a sense of social belongingness among black South African youth who “related a feeling of agency that, while perhaps at odds with the realities of their circumstances, drew attention to their drive to be part of the ‘New South Africa’ with its promised era of opportunity beyond the township” (Swartz et al. 2013, p. 32). It is also interesting to note that in the first decade or so after the democratic transition, it was persons in younger age ranges that were most likely to view social circumstances as improving. According to a 2003 survey, 37 percent of youth age 16–24 indicated their lives had improved over the previous five years, as compared with roughly 30 percent of people age 35 and older. Related to this, youth were less inclined than older respondents in the survey to say their lives had worsened, with 19 percent of respondents aged 16–24 as compared with roughly 33 percent of respondents aged 35 and older indicating their lives had worsened (Daniel et al. 2006, p. 27).

The relationship between youth financial wellbeing, social belongingness, and system confidence is a central issue here, and it is important to further explore how South African youth have perceived and acted upon those dynamics. Social belongness frequently is operationalized in ways such as interpersonal acceptance and relatedness, capacities to exert influence, and expectations of benefits (Peterson et al. 2008, p. 62). The context of this belongingness (and the identities to which it ties) could range from micro- to macro-level, including from the family level to national level and beyond. For South African youth positioned at junctures of religious and civic life, both religious and civic considerations may be framed in local and national terms, but with religious frameworks (by virtue of their connections to spiritual realms and reach) potentially transcending geographic distinctions altogether. Understandings and pursuits of belongingness along either religious or civic lines may achieve convergences at points, but they also may diverge. Both outcomes have occurred among South African youth, with the extent of economic wellbeing sometimes factoring significantly in the direction of these outcomes, and with those more favorably positioned within those systems (through various forms of “capital”) sensing greater possibilities for efficacy.

Researchers have drawn attention, for example, to how educational levels of youth activists influenced the depth and breadth of their activism during and after the anti-apartheid struggle. According to Sharlene Swartz, this was evidenced in “an initial sharp divide between the well-educated politicized youth who have subsequently grown up into political leadership in the ANC and those who have been marginalised by the struggle.” Youth inhabiting South Africa’s margins are, in fact, more likely to harbor stronger skepticism toward reformist and procedural approaches and to be inclined, instead, toward more ideologically radical and (at times) antisocial approaches (Swartz 2004, p. 79).

Degrees of social belongingness and system confidence are observable in consonances and dissonances in the social languages and methodologies used in engaging with societal systems. Bonganjalo Goba highlights what he refers to as a “deep confusion and profound alienation” associated with the struggle to “redefine South Africans’ identity as a people” (Goba 1997, pp. 66–67). He states that the confusion and alienation result both from years of the moral corruptions of apartheid and the religious ambiguity of the new secular South African state (Goba 1997, pp. 66–67). The moral corruptions of apartheid, which included the religious justification of massive oppression, distorted both the social reality and religious outlook of many youth—leaving in its wake a legacy of cynicism and brokenness. The secularist instincts of the new South African state have created another kind of confusion for South Africans within a context where religion has been such a dominant force. Both sets of factors have contributed to a pronounced alienation among youth—a disconnectedness from inward and outward centers of meaning.

Youth in circumstances of severe marginalization often have more fully internalized the distortions and brutalities of the apartheid legacy, leading toward terribly destructive ends. However, associating youth alienation entirely with the actions of government perhaps attributes too much power to the ability of the government (whether in its past or present form in South Africa) to define the personhood of its people.

Clearly, one of the compelling stories of the South African historical experience is the extent to which the personhood of so many of the oppressed was preserved and fortified through the inner resources of the people, despite centuries of government assault. The religious sector has been a crucial resource in this respect, as will be examined here.

3. Converging and Competing Loyalties: Late-1990s Nationhood Formations

The concept of “dual citizenship” has been used to describe a feeling of political conflictedness. This concept has been applied by social scientist C.R.D. Halisi to the South African context, with reference to people whose discriminatory exclusion from citizenship rights and benefits has led them to pursue political alternatives to the formal politics within their context, and also to people wrestling within modern national settings with enduring loyalties to “ancestral or primordial communities” (Halisi 1999, p. 3). His 1999 analysis captures dynamics pertaining to the apartheid era, and even the immediate post-apartheid era, but the tensions identified in the analysis persist within 21st century South Africa. For many South Africans (and especially socially marginalized and disillusioned youth), inherited colonial institutional landscapes have remained unreliable as sources of conceptual and instrumental reinforcement of black community meaning and wellbeing. The social benefits conferred by those institutional realms upon rank-and-file black South Africans have seemed sparse and sporadic, and the normative claims and rationalizations of these realms have seemed ungrounded, unsatisfying, and illusory.

At the time of the 1994 democratic transition, few places in the world had as high a percentage of nominal Christians among their population as South Africa, with the percentage then at 75 percent (Hendricks 1996). Christian affiliation among South African youth has been quite high as well, with 1993 data from the Human Sciences Research Council showing that 53 percent of you age 16–20 “attended church once a week or more,” and only eight percent indicating “no religious affiliation at all” (Slabbert et al. 1994, p. 86).

Certainly, there were strong religious drivers behind these high levels of youth church involvement, but there also were social drivers. The “English-speaking” churches in South Africa, especially black churches, were a prominent political force in many instances during the anti-apartheid movement. Quite often, churches were the only organizational vehicle available to address political and, to some extent, social concerns, given the widespread government banning of activist organizations during the struggle. As a result, a culture of activism and social involvement developed among the “English-speaking” churches, and churches and church leaders were increasingly looked to for leadership by the South African masses.

Although activist youth often found the political pace and direction of church leaders more cautious and deliberate than they desired, the strong voices and presence of church leaders, such as Desmond Tutu, Allen Boesak, Beyers Naude, and Frank Chikane, secured respect and acceptance of the political importance of churches, even among many of the activist youth. Also, many activist youth worked closely with church-related structures, such as the University Christian Movement during the 1960s and the Student Union for Christian Action during the 1980s. Both organizations were among the few existing outlets within South Africa for a youth-based liberationist politics during those periods.

At times, churches catalyzed, but they also constricted, youth activism, with the constrictions stemming from the sometimes-mutual abstractions of “liberation theology and/or pietism,” and their respective tendencies toward ignoring “immediate social problems and concerns” (Slabbert et al. 1994, p. 89). Therefore, it is important to question the social disposition of the Christian expressions being embraced by younger populations. Some observers of the South African scene have noted an erosion of social consciousness among young people of all income levels—partly explained by a rise in individualism, materialism, and cynicism. At the religious level, this has sometimes translated into an emphasis on personal piety, prosperity gospels, and other worldliness. A 1989 Africa Watch report, for example, commented on the “proliferation of politically neutral” gospel music groups among young South Africans, pointing out that the youth involved in these groups were rarely involved in any other youth structures or civic activities (Africa Watch 1989, p. 35).

No doubt the slowed and stalled momentum of black social progress in the decades after the 1994 democratic transition eroded youth confidence in South Africa’s civic promise. That did not necessarily result in youth looking more toward the religious sphere for symbolic constructions, participatory channels, and operational deliverables related to their hopes for change and transformation. But the fulfillment of youth redemptive hopes did hang in the balance, drawing substance from both religious and socio-cultural framings of wellbeing, with the two converging or diverging at various points and aligning or distancing youth from the civic agenda of the New South Africa.

A key conceptual construct operating as a potential bridge between South African religious and civic imperatives has been “ubuntu,” a Southern African concept understood to mean “I am because we are.” Featuring prominently within post-apartheid conceptualizations of the meaning of citizenship, ubuntu has provided South African democracy with important moral centering, operational measurements, and participatory mandates. Nevertheless, ubuntu as a political standard has worked both for and against the post-apartheid government’s rollouts of democracy. As Swartz comments, the post-apartheid government’s strong appeal to “a ‘new patriotism’ … [has used] … ‘shared symbols or historical myths’ … such as ubuntu to deflect protest from the lack of social justice” (Swartz 2006, p. 562).

This points to more widespread tensions within South Africa pertaining to religious and civic conceptualizations of identity and belonging, and how the popular ubuntu paradigm factors into these tensions. Although ubuntu commitments to interdependence and the common good are shared civic and religious objectives (Yelinje 2024; Lewis 2010; Resane 2022), there have been differences and debates between and within religious and civic sectors over the importance to be given to social unity (and its emphasis on cohesion and conformity) versus personhood (and its emphasis on individual distinctiveness, rights, and freedoms).

Christoph Marx, for example, argues that ubuntu, in its cultural glorifications of “an imagined past,” enshrines social renderings of community values that contribute to “an attitude of conformity” and in ways “contrary to the development of democracy” (Marx 2002). Similarly, Paul Hess points out that ubuntu’s “idealised notions of community and consensus” leave “the problem of personhood … unresolved.” The analysis by Swartz connects with a concern with resolution, in this sense, through approaches to community value promotion that permit an emphasis on moral agency (and, similarly, choice) equally “thick” as the government’s emphasis on “citizenship education” and “nation building” (Swartz 2006, p. 566).

Scholars have argued that discontinuities between concerns for personhood and community values have seemed most blatant and most in need of reconsideration, not only where the disconnects have occasioned political overreach, or nonchalance, but also where the disconnects have enabled inclinations toward greed (Lephoko 2024; Williams 2022). Concerns about the permeation of greed within South African society have pointed to the problem of corruption within the managerial and social leadership class and the problematics of prosperity preachings by church leaders and pundits. Various critics of these trajectories of greed have viewed ubuntu principles as an essential corrective, with Thinandavha Mashau and Mookgo Kgatle lauding the theological value of the ethics of “care, solidarity, economic justice, hope and accompaniment” written into ubuntu teachings (Mashau and Kgatle 2019).

As youth have wrestled with social identity and purposefulness in the New South Africa, they have been offered various competing civic and religious formulations and formalizations of community values and objectives. Youth have found some aspects of these formalized conceptual and institutional resources more compelling and fulfilling than others. Interview and survey data from recent decades provide key indicators of youth inclinations and enthusiasms toward civic and religious framings and facilitations of collective purpose—including interview data from a youth study I conducted in the early-2000s, and survey data from Afrobarometer South Africa. Youth confidence and trust in civic and religious sector offerings are explored here along various lines of youth involvement and perception.

4. Youth and Faith-Based Civic Leadership Development: Early-2000s Checkpoints

In an early-2000s study of South African faith-based youth agency and activism, I explored civic and religious messaging and channels of engagement, programmatic and policy content, and parameters of that engagement at local and national levels. The research was conducted in three geographic areas: metropolitan Johannesburg, metropolitan Durban, and a former “homeland” in a rural South Africa named Qwaqwa. A series of focus groups were convened, and approximately six hundred youth and youth workers were consulted through the focus group process. Information was gathered mainly via focus groups, comprised of local youth and youth workers from the designated geographic areas. Information was also gathered through participation in broader forums with a more regional or national character, including a meeting of the South African Council of Churches National Youth Forum in Johannesburg; a summit of National Student Christian Organizations in Johannesburg; and an NGO training forum at the King–Luthuli Transformation Center in Johannesburg. In total, approximately six hundred youth and youth workers were consulted through this process.3

A primary concern expressed by the study participants was poverty and unemployment, identified by many of these informants as the largest problem youth are facing. As one youth informant from the Sharpeville township put it, “how can young people have a full life without employment”? Another Sharpeville youth pointed out that youth are wandering the streets searching for work (many of them with qualifications). Youth in Soweto township expressed an acute awareness about how choices for a livelihood were limited in the past to certain “lousy professions” reserved for their racial group. These Soweto youth made it clear that the apartheid practice of “job reservation” had instilled a negative attitude towards certain blue-collar jobs. They expressed a desire to be trained for more skilled or higher status “professions” (rather than the more monotonous, dangerous, and unappealing work to which many black South Africans were relegated). A youth informant in Clermont township (outside of Durban) also criticized the narrow range of jobs black South Africans customarily are forced to take—singling out the job of a “policeman” in particular, while another youth in that location added that youth have not been given any assistance that might help them create jobs for themselves.

The youth focus group participants from Johannesburg-area townships condemned the job market as “problematic,” noting that people receive lots of training but then there are no jobs for them. Even with training, youth said they get turned down for many jobs due to “lack of experience.” They also pointed out that “only the privileged few are employed” and that people “often have to pay someone in order to get a job and may even have to offer employers sexual services to get or keep a job.” Meanwhile, youth informants at the University of the North in Qwaqwa indicated that rural youth lack not only jobs, but also educational opportunities that would begin to make them employable.

As this early-2000s feedback from youth demonstrates, youth were overwhelmed by the lack of employment during the first 10 years after South Africa’s democratic transition. Unfortunately, lack of employment opportunities remains a primary concern for youth decades later, with the 2025 youth unemployment rate calculated at 59 percent—which is even higher than the 40–45 percent youth unemployment rate of the early 2000s (Statista 2026).

The lack of employment certainly has produced urgent economic necessities and desperation, but it also results in an eroded sense of self-worth, social relevance, and community “meaningfulness” among unemployed youth. A young woman participant from the University of the North in Qwaqwa summarized the matter this way:

“Whether or not there is money for anything, I think the basic issue is identity. There are kids who escape all these social symptoms and still make it in life. The kind of kids I’m talking about have purpose. They are going somewhere, whether they have resources or not. So, the main problem is that our social structure has broken down to such an extent that nobody knows who he or she is.”

Youth in the study did not tend to connect low self-esteem to any inherited sense of racial inferiority imposed by apartheid society, but more to details of their current social marginalization.

With social meaningfulness (even more than economic marginalization, in some instances) identified as the overarching problem, many of the study participants emphasized spirituality as a primary resource in their personal development. These youth had a clear sense of what the government could do and should do, especially as it related to facilitating economic and social opportunity, but they also were clear that youth had core needs beyond (and sometimes at odds with) governmental purposes and scope. Some of the youth informants, in fact, explicitly referenced the ANC government’s secularist inclinations as standing in opposition to youth who understood and pursued individual and community life in more intersectional spiritual and social ways. Youth in the Johannesburg and Durban areas voiced similar demands, for example, for a return to religious education in the schools.

Not all of the youth informants viewed religious education as a crucial, missing ingredient in the educational formation of youth, nor did they view moral shortfalls within South African society as fundamentally a religious issue. A youth informant from Soweto remarked: “Every society has problems of morality; people make choices and they don’t always choose what they know to be the right thing—from a religious standpoint or otherwise.” Youth who aligned with this viewpoint defended their position by arguing that delinquency was not necessarily a religious problem (i.e., knowing what is morally right) but, rather, a consequence of the breakdown of family structure and an unavoidable consequence of unemployment (i.e., structural impediments to doing what is morally right). For youth who argued the issue this way, moral formation was viewed to be as much the province (and capability) of the government as it was of the religious sector.

Moreover, there were youth informants who suggested not only that the governmental sector might be given more credit as a resource for spiritual and moral formation, but also that the church sector might be given less, in light of what some perceived to be insensitivity on the part of church elders to youth concerns, culture, and leadership aspirations.

Nevertheless, while alert to formal governmental and faith sector channels of spiritual and moral formation, the youth informants made clear the importance of facilitating normative development and overall personal wholeness by means of their own agency and auspices. They understood that youth, themselves, would define, instrumentalize, and determine the relevance of matters bearing upon their wellbeing. Youth during this early-2000s juncture made clear that what they needed most from established institutional sectors (governmental and religious) were opportunities for training, inclusion, and influence—in collaboration with (as well as independent of) these institutional spaces. In these respects, there may be little that distinguishes the early-2000s from the current moment, except perhaps the increased resource concentrations among leading institutions (especially state sector and corporate sector institutions), the growing disparities between those behemoths and the South African masses, and the widening gap between popular expectations and achievements of broad-based social potential within the New South Africa.

These imbalances and their impact on system viability and system confidence are further affirmed by significant youth protest mobilizations during the 2010s and further illuminated through youth public opinion data, especially from Afrobarometer (2026).

5. Religion, Civic Culture, and Youth System Confidence: 2010s Splintering and 2020s Reevaluations

During the years of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency (1999–2008) and Jacob Zuma’s presidency (2009–2018), youth became noticeably distrustful and critical of South African institutions and leaders. Youth frustrations with practices by institutional sectors at the heart of the nation’s social power structure (particularly the governmental sector and higher education sector) escalated into mass protests.

During Mbeki’s presidency, South African students mobilized against neighboring Zimbabwe’s governmental policies and the severe political and economic hardships being inflicted on the Zimbabwean people. What South African students were mobilizing against as well in this instance was the South African government’s coddling of the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, and the failure to hold his government accountable for the hardships being experienced within Zimbabwe. University of Cape Town students and staff, for example, engaged in April 2008 marches in Cape Town to show solidarity with the Zimbabwean people and to push the South African government to promote policy changes in Zimbabwe (Gophe 2008). Also, 2008 marked a major outbreak of protest and violence by economically marginalized South African laborers against the presence of immigrant workers within South Africa (ironically, focused mainly against Zimbabweans), taking place especially in black townships, such as Alexandria and Khayelitsha. In response to these xenophobic outbursts, however, faith-based and community-based organizations mobilized thousands of South Africans who marched on behalf of immigrant rights and protections (Reuters 2008).

Some of the largest youth protests seen within South Africa since the anti-apartheid struggle, though, took place during Zuma’s presidency, with students revolting against the persistent colonialist structuring of South African tertiary education and against escalating costs for tertiary school matriculation. Student mobilizations aimed at decolonizing tertiary education achieved important momentum via March 2015 uprisings at the University of Cape Town, with hundreds of students and staff protesting the colonial moorings of the curriculum, including the use of Afrikaans as a primary instructional language. Operating under the banner of “Rhodes Must Fall” (#RMF), this movement (which spread across South Africa and beyond) sought to align South African higher education more closely with social equity and justice causes within South Africa and with an intersectional academic praxeology that centers “Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism, and Radical Black Feminism” (Ramugondo 2025).

A related uprising by tertiary students and staff emerged on South African campuses later in 2015. Embracing as its rallying cry, #FeesMustFall, a movement against prohibitively high student matriculation fees captured public attention, including an October 2015 protest at the University of Witwatersrand in which more than a thousand protesters occupied and shut down parts of the university campus (Kunene 2016).

By December 2015, youth anger was being aimed more directly at the Zuma presidency, including its widespread corruption and venality. Thousands of South Africans participated in #ZumaMustFall marches in December of that year across South Africa, as dissatisfaction with Zuma’s leadership of the nation and of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party contributed to a steep decline in support for the ANC in the 2016 national elections. Post-election studies of the 2016 elections pointed to a particular decline in support for the ANC among youth, with youth comprising a large percentage of the estimated six million eligible voters who declined to participate in the voting and with youth (age 18–19) among potential voters most willing to shift their political allegiance to another political party (BBC 2015; Tracey 2017).

Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, there were clear indicators of growing youth alienation from established institutional sectors. South Africa’s 2026 Afrobarometer survey explores key indices of system confidence on the part of rank-and-file South Africans (Afrobarometer 2026). Administered to 1600 participants (43 percent of whom were 18 to 35 years of age), the survey solicited respondents’ perspectives on social issue prioritization, the nature of their institutional engagement, and their sense of trust in various leadership and institutional sectors. Responses within these three areas reveal a great deal about South African levels of system confidence at this juncture in its history.

Several survey questions opened out on social issue priorities and imperatives, including a question that asked respondents to designate the “most important problems facing the country that the government should address.” Unemployment was selected by 27 percent of respondents, and crime and security by 19 percent, as the two top choices.4 Another question asked: “How would you describe the present economic condition of the country?” Fifty-three percent of respondents characterized economic conditions as “very bad,” and 22 percent as “fairly bad.” A series of questions focused on specific aspects of economic performance, while also asking how badly the current government is handling those problems. These responses are outlined in Table 2.

Table 2. Government responses to key challenges.

	Very Badly	Fairly Badly	Fairly Well	Very Well
Improving living standards for the poor	70%	21%	8%	1%
Creating jobs	80%	16%	3%	1%
Narrowing gaps between the rich and poor	76%	17%	5%	<1%
Addressing educational needs	33%	20%	35%	12%

Source: (Afrobarometer 2026, pp. 47–49).

Opinions about factors contributing to economic conditions were also explored through questions capturing respondents’ views on the presence of immigrant populations. The respondents were asked whether there should be more or fewer job seekers from other countries coming to live and work in South Africa, in response to which 32 percent indicated there should be none at all and 51 percent indicated there should be fewer. Related to this, a question asked whether there should be more or fewer refugees from other countries to come and live in South Africa, and the responses were similar, with 36 percent answering none at all and 49 percent saying fewer. These responses seemingly confirm the depth and breadth of anti-immigrant sentiment that has been displayed in recent years through xenophobic threats and violence against immigrants in South Africa. This has continued to escalate, to the point of anti-immigrant groups issuing an ultimatum to immigrants (who are mostly from other African nations) that they leave the country by 30 June 2026 or be violently removed (dead or alive). Although the South African government denounced these threats by anti-immigrant groups, the threats resulted in at least 53,000 immigrant departures in the weeks leading up to the 30 June deadline (with the evacuations of many of these persons facilitated by their home governments) (Kagoe 2026).

Another dimension bearing upon system confidence is involvements with and importance placed upon social sector institutions and leaders. Levels of civic involvement ranged widely, depending upon the type of involvement. While a large percentage of respondents indicated voting in elections, with 65 percent of respondents saying they voted in the 2024 elections, additional engagement with political institutions and officials was much less common. When respondents were asked how often during the past year they had participated in types of political advocacy, 86 percent indicated no involvements in protest or demonstrations; 83 percent indicated no participation in collective sharing of information with officials to influence their political actions; and 93 percent said they had made no contact with members of Parliament to express an opinion on social matters (Afrobarometer 2026, pp. 26–27, and 31).

Low levels of involvement in various dimensions of civic practice may be related to low levels of citizen confidence that their civic involvement matters only as far as electing persons to office, but not in terms of influencing policy discussions and actions. For example, when survey respondents were asked how often members of Parliament listen to what ordinary people have to say, 51 percent of respondents said “never,” 35 percent said “sometimes,” and only 13 percent said “often” or “always” (Afrobarometer 2026, p. 24). This suggests a reciprocal disengagement (and perhaps, disinterest) between citizens and officials beyond the voting process. But this disengagement may not be as much an indictment of civic mechanisms and procedures as it is an indictment of the leadership values and commitments of persons entrusted with civic leadership.

Survey respondents evidenced low levels of trust in key government officials. When asked how much they trust the president, 34 percent said “not at all” and 50 percent said “a little” or “somewhat,” while only 10 percent said “a lot.” Even less trust was expressed in members of parliament, with 39 percent saying they did not trust them at all, 55 percent saying they trusted them “a little” or “somewhat,” and only five percent saying they trusted them “a lot.” Moreover, a large percentage of survey respondents believed public officials to be corrupt, with 73 percent of respondents saying the president and most or all of the officials in his office were engaged in corruption and 68 percent of respondents saying most or all members of parliament were, as well (Afrobarometer 2026, pp. 35 and 39).

Nevertheless, despite all the ways public officials have disappointed and frustrated youth populations, when Afrobarometer respondents (almost half of whom were youth) were asked about the first choice of sectors in which they would like to work, 37 percent of respondents said the “government or public sector.” Apparently, the possibilities for aligning government practices with youth empowerment concerns overrode youth feelings of how poorly the government had performed on these matters, as evidenced by the 31 percent of survey respondents who strongly disagreed and 31 percent who disagreed with the statement: “Community leaders are doing a good job of building and promoting young leaders” (Afrobarometer 2026, pp. 20 and 77).

The survey respondents had a much more favorable view of civil society institutions and leaders (including faith sector institutions and leaders). When asked how much they trust civil society leaders, 17 percent said “a lot,” 63 percent said “a little” or “somewhat,” and 17 percent said “not at all.” The numbers were even more favorable with respect to religious leaders, with 23 percent of respondents indicating they trusted religious leaders “a lot,” 50 percent saying they trusted them “a little” or “somewhat,” and 16 percent saying they did not trust them at all. Meanwhile, the extent of corruption was felt to be less within the civil society sector than within the governmental sector. Thirty-four percent of the survey respondents believed “most” or “all” of civil society leaders have engaged in corruption, and 33 percent felt most of all of religious leaders had engaged in corruption. Those percentages were only half as high as percentages of respondents believing “most” or “all” officials in the president’s office and parliament had corruption problems (Afrobarometer 2026, pp. 37–38 and 40–41).

These various data capture important aspects of South African opinion and practice pertaining to the relationship between religious and civic life, outlining indices of trust and engagement between rank-and-file citizens (including youth) and key leadership sectors. An underlying basis for engagement and trust in these instances is alignment between these various actors with respect to principles and priorities, and the data show greater citizen confidence in the religious sector than in civic sector performative alignment with the urgencies of the impoverished and marginalized South African masses.

The severities (in scale and scope) of this marginalization and impoverishment inform a sense of moral urgency by which rank-and-file South Africans (youth in particular) are determining resonance and relevance of institutional sectors. Contrasting approaches by civic and religious leaders to June 2026 commemorations surrounding National Youth Day and the 50-year anniversary of the Soweto uprising provide one additional and compelling illustration of sectoral divergences and the religio-political tracking of youth at this juncture.

6. Competing and Conflicting Alignments with South Africa’s Youth Struggle: A 2026 Snapshot

South Africa’s National Youth Day is celebrated each year on the highly symbolic date of 16 June, the day on which the Soweto mass uprising and massacre occurred in 1976. The first National Youth Day holiday took place in 1995, with President Nelson Mandela keynoting its official celebration event held that year at KwaZulu–Natal’s Ezakheni township Stadium, establishing a pattern of presidential keynotes and stadium venues for the annual event. In 2026, the official National Youth Day event, and its coinciding 50th year commemoration of the Soweto uprising, took place at FNB stadium in Soweto, with President Cyril Ramaphosa providing the keynote address.

The theme of Ramaphosa’s speech was “RESET@50—The Future Calls,” and it highlighted doors democracy helped open since 1994 “that apartheid deliberately kept closed.” The speech also acknowledged that “opening doors is not enough [and that the] task now,” according to Ramaphosa:

is to ensure that those doors lead to skills, work, enterprise, ownership and dignity [for] the graduate who sends out dozens of applications and receives no response, … [for] the young entrepreneur with an idea but no access to capital, … [and for] the skilled artisan who cannot find an opportunity to demonstrate their talents.

Ramaphosa stated that the government’s commitments to youth empowerment would be strengthened along three trajectories of action: (1) expansions of “public employment, youth service, and workplace experience;” (2) “moving away from training for training’s sake” and ensuring “qualifications lead more directly to work and enterprise;” and (3) integrating young people into the heart of the economy through job creation in “manufacturing, mining beneficiation, digital infrastructure, agriculture, green industrialisation, energy, logistics, critical minerals, tourism and the creative economy.” A very tangible step in these directions was a one trillion-rand investment committed to infrastructure projects (Ramaphosa 2026, p. 1).

Although the significance of a presidential address delivered at an official national event served as strong affirmation of governmental concern with youth development, skepticism about governmental follow-through on its youth empowerment commitments remained strong within several key youth activist circles. A few weeks before the 16 June National Youth Day event, the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) publicly criticized the tepid official responses to massive youth unemployment in South Africa that continues to “rob millions of young people of their dignity, hope and economic freedom.” Furthermore, the ANCYL announced to Ramaphosa that he “would not be allowed” to address young people at the event until the youth in attendance are able to pass along their CVs to his office (Mashamaite 2026). Another leading youth organization, the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), pushed for Ramaphosa to declare youth unemployment a “pandemic” and a national “crisis” (Ndaliso 2026). Nevertheless, both organizations offered their conditional support of the proposal outlines of Ramaphosa’s speech, providing the proposals led to “measurable” and “evidence based” policy responses (Mashamaite 2026; South African Government 2026).

Although critical of government youth policies, the NYDA (as a governmental entity) and the ANCYL (an autonomous affiliate of the ANC ruling party) have been relatively muted in their criticisms of the government. The South African Council of Churches (SACC), however, as a faith-based organization with no formal ties to the government, has been less constrained in criticisms of government policies.5 This has been especially evident among SACC’s youth wings and leaders, as seen in their response to the official 16 June National Youth Day event.

SACC youth dissatisfaction with government positioning around youth development (both with respect to its public policy components and its facilitations of the National Youth Day event) was made clear by the fact that SACC youth organized a supplemental, counter-event of sorts to commemorate the annual holiday and the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. The SACC convened a “National Prayer Walk and Youth Led Service” that took place on 27 June 2026, a little more than a week after the government-led 16 June Youth Day event. The SACC event, operating under a theme of “SACC Youth Advancement: Abundant Life, Faith and Justice for a Flourishing Life,” began the day with a march that partly retraced the steps of the youth marchers 50 years ago, starting at the historic Vilikazi Street area where the Hector Pietersen Museum is now located (and where the former residences of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, and Desmond Tutu are located). The SACC march ended at Grace Bible Church in the Pimville section of Soweto, where SACC youth led a commemorative worship service.

One of the primary speakers at the service was Lulama Ntuta, who currently serves as SACC’s First Vice President and previously served as President of the Anglican Youth of Southern Africa. Ntuta provided an opening address at the service, drawing from a formal statement issued by SACC youth (and with several of them standing beside her during the presentation). A central premise outlined in the statement was a collective commitment by SACC youth to “a culture of ubuntu where we see each other as humans and connected”—Ntuta suggested that a commitment to ubuntu principles points toward certain obligations (presumably from all South Africans, including the institutional sectors impacting society and the youth who would hope to bring about constructive change).

A fundamental obligation, said Ntuta, is a commitment to “honesty, integrity, and accountability” and to the pursuit of “a corruption-free South Africa.” Here, SACC youth were delineating and operationalizing values viewed as essential for community flourishing. The SACC statement also stressed South Africa’s national obligation to build “an inclusive economy that works for everyone,”which these youth regarded as a structural basis for flourishing community. For SACC youth, a meaningful incorporation of ubuntu principles takes place through a coupling and consistency between values and structures that advance the common good.

While not an entirely unique formulation, these SACC youth perspectives and community organizing measures serve as a direct counter to multiple South African institutional and leadership sectors whose efforts to secure broad-based community flourishing have fallen well short of social targets or measurements of flourishing and meaningfulness. While the faith sector is in no position to shoulder responsibilities for community flourishing by itself, and while effective partnerships across sectors must be forged to create any real possibilities for progress, it also is important to speak and act out of the courage of conviction to critique the shortfalls and propose correctives.

Perhaps youth, such as those mobilized in Soweto on 27 June 2026, genuinely invoke the spirit of youth agency embodied by Soweto youth in 1976, drawing from the strength displayed in that historic uprising 50 years ago, pointing the way forward for contemporary pursuits of South African youth flourishing and empowerment. The economic hardships youth are currently experiencing are certainly unrelenting. It remains to be seen whether youth insistence on comprehensive and meaningful change will be equally unrelenting.

7. Concluding Thoughts

South Africa’s long desired post-apartheid nation building was fragile, if not tenuous, from the outset, with its prospects for successfully reframing the socio-economic order and civic compact requiring broad and enthusiastic support, including from its anxious black majority population. Perhaps no segment across the South African social spectrum looked more eagerly toward the fulfillment of South Africa’s democratic prospects than black South African youth, and likely no segment was more disappointed with the results in the decades after the 1994 transition than these youth masses.

Driven by urgencies of deepening poverty and widening social marginalization, and animated by generations-long social and religious ideals of equity and justice, post-apartheid black youth sought to build upon the democratic commitments of their forebears and the activist legacies of youth predecessors who had been on the frontlines of the black freedom struggle. Nonetheless, post-apartheid black youth came to realize that the ideals, actors, and agencies that helped resource 20th-century South African regime change could not necessarily be counted on for effecting 21st-century societal transformation. Social progress too often was slowed or sidetracked by shortfalls in collective resources and in collective commitment to the common good, including fair and equitable collective resource access and deployment.

Black youth embraced the enthusiasms of the New South Africa, and enthusiastically stayed the course through the early transitional years. But faced with unrelenting black youth impoverishment and marginalization, black youth trust and confidence in the promise of a truly New South Africa have faded. Or, at the very least, black youth are less inclined at this juncture (more than 30 years after the democratic transition) to believe that the institutions and leaders entrusted with collective black flourishing are equal to the task.

For black South African youth, panaceas can be no substitute for progress, which is something acknowledged (in varying degrees) across the spectrum of black youth (whether religious or secular, or formally educated or low-skilled laborers). Although the vision and promise of a New South Africa has not been abandoned by black youth, it perhaps is becoming viewed less as a possession hoarded or handed down by past or present leaders but, rather, something that lives within successive generations of black youth, taking inspiration from their collective religious and social imaginations, as refracted through the prism of their diverse social realities.

Black South African youth may feel they owe it to themselves, to future generations, and to previous youth freedom fighters to refuse settling for outlines of a New South Africa authorized by anyone but themselves and that does not provide black youth (across the board) with genuine possibilities for a bright social future.

There are strong indicators that this is the benchmark toward which many black youth continue to strive in the New South Africa against a backdrop of sacrificial black youth activism, as emblematized by the Soweto youth uprising 50 years ago and by the progenitors and heirs of that spirit of resistance.