Politically, the rally was probably a wasted effort. Although South Africa is one of the most politically active countries in the world–20.7 million of 27.5 million people eligible to vote have registered–polls suggest that fewer than half of eligible young voters 18 to 24 will turn out on Election Day, April 14. The balloting will mark the 10th anniversary of the country’s first democratic elections, which followed years of protest by radicalized youth. Yet the generation of South Africans that has grown up since Nelson Mandela walked out of jail in 1990–sometimes called the “Born Frees”–are as apolitical as their peers in Europe or the United States. “Politics is a nonevent,” says John Simpson, a professor at the University of Cape Town who has extensively polled South African youth. “Twenty years ago young people were at the vanguard of the struggle for change. Now kids are saying you must look after yourself, that social issues are not important.”
Lamentable as such an attitude may be, it’s considered normal in some of the world’s most stable democracies. And it doesn’t mean South African kids today are apathetic. On the contrary. The Born Frees have strong opinions on things that interest them–sports, relationships, sneakers, cell phones, computers, malls and the home-brewed brand of dance music known as kwaito. They are blessedly colorblind, and convinced there’s no limit to what they can do.
The ANC arrived late to this party. Its elders–and South African parents generally–were appalled at the often violent and misogynist early messages of rap. They shunned the new authors of hip-hop’s local variant when kwaito hit the scene in 1993 with a single by Arthur Mofokate, “Don’t Call Me Kaffir [n—–].” Other young iconoclasts did their damnedest to outrage society, even attacking veterans of the antiapartheid movement like President Thabo Mbeki. In 2002, when the kwaito group Skwatta Kamp issued a cut that dissed politicians generally and included the line “Our president is an alcoholic,” the ANC Youth League fought back. The group wanted the song pulled off the air–which only gave the insult a wider hearing.
Mbeki himself denies that South Africa’s youngsters are apolitical. Just last week he insisted in a radio interview that they’re “conscious of their role and place in the future of South Africa.” But there’s no denying that such high-minded talk no longer translates for many youngsters. Unathi Nkayi, a 25-year-old DJ on Johannesburg’s most popular radio station, Yfm, says that South African youth “are tired of being told that they are important–that the youth is the country’s future. They really don’t care.”
Far more than politics, picking a personal identity consumes the Born Frees. The country’s first-world economy has sucked in international products since the wall of sanctions fell. Any 13-year-old readily names his or her favorite bands and brands of clothing. FUBU and Levis spawned local competitors Vertigo and Loxion Kulca. Johannesburg boys such as Given Andrew, 13, crave outings to one of Johannesburg’s several suburban mega-malls, where they can take turns on a Sega Super Megalo soccer machine and surf the Internet. A resident of inner-city Hillbrow, Andrew is utterly at ease in such glittering, once-exclusive precincts. “I don’t feel anything about race, because some of my friends are white,” he says. “They don’t hate us.” Apartheid is a history subject in school.
Parents boggle at the Born Frees’ precociousness. Andrew’s mother, Pretty Ngcobo, 33, frets that the Internet and cable television tutor her three children on sex and drugs. “These children are not shy, like the older generation,” she said. A self-employed fashion designer, she nurses painful memories: her family had to sleep in the bush during factional fighting that led up to the 1994 voting, and she says a political activist once raped her and escaped punishment because of his clout. “I can’t wear earrings in the street, and I may be killed for a cell phone,” she says. “We still are not free.”
But others count unshackling young minds as huge progress. “Fifteen years ago black kids [were] confined to little worlds within townships and powerless over their lives,” says Professor Simpson of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing. In October the institute published the results of 3,000 interviews with boys and girls 7 to 17. Different cultural and racial groups now mix freely, have similar attitudes and like the same products and brands, the study found. “The most significant difference from the past is that this bunch of kids is self-confident,” says Simpson. New technology helps generate this feeling of empowerment. While many parents only recently became introduced to electricity and appliances, cell-phone use among the Born Frees doubled between 2001 and 2003.
Marketers grasp this transformation. Coke’s innovative TV ad campaign plays on youth’s obsession with being “real.” Loxion Kulca’s roots in Soweto–loxion is slang for “location,” or township–helped it grow into the country’s leading street-wear brand. Founded in 1996, Yfm is now a conglomerate, taking in radio, an award-winning magazine and a fashion line. The station recently conducted public HIV tests for a DJ and a leading rapper, an example no ANC official has yet set. “To be young at this moment is a totally new ball game,” says DJ Bad Boy T. “The struggle is to be true to who you are.” Veterans of the struggle for the vote would appreciate more gratitude, but the new cause also promises a better–or, at least, hipper–South Africa.
