The fragmentation of struggles—whether in education, labour, gender justice, or community resistance—has allowed the capitalist state to isolate and suppress dissent. The working class must respond with unity, clarity, and organisation. The formation of sectoral movements is not merely a tactical necessity; it is a strategic imperative for building a mass workers’ party rooted in Marxist principles.
This party must be democratic, militant, and uncompromising in its opposition to capitalism. It must reject the reformist illusions peddled by the ruling elite and their allies in the trade union bureaucracy. It must be built from below, through the active participation of workers, youth, women, and communities in struggle. A socialist programme must unite youth struggles with those of workers, women, and communities. Only through mass organisation—under the banner of a Marxist Youth and Student Movement and a broader workers’ party—can youth reclaim their future and transform society.
The Role of Youth and Students
The youth must reclaim the revolutionary legacy of 1976—not as a nostalgic symbol, but as a living, breathing force for change. The Marxist Youth and Student Movement (MYSM) must be the spearhead of this transformation, linking arms with youth across Africa and the globe. The global nature of capitalism’s crisis demands international solidarity and coordinated struggle.
Youth must be the ideological vanguard, raising consciousness, organising in schools, colleges and universities, confronting the commodification of education. They must reject the false promises of upward mobility through elite schooling and instead fight for a system that serves the collective needs of society.
The Urgent Need for Political Organisation
This generation is not apathetic—they are abandoned. Their suffering is not inevitable; it is the product of a capitalist system in decay. What is missing is a credible political movement that speaks to their conditions and offers a path forward.
A Mass Workers Party (MWP) must be the political home of all these movements. It must be rooted in the lived experiences of the working class and be guided by a revolutionary socialist programme. It must reject the capitalist logic of profit over people and build a society based on human need, equality, and democratic control of resources.
This is not a distant dream—it is a necessity. The crisis of capitalism is deepening. The working class is being pushed to the brink. The time to organise is now.
The crisis of capitalism is global. So must be our resistance. The youth must be the light cavalry—swift, bold, and uncompromising—clearing the path for the heavy battalions of the working class. Together, we can overthrow capitalism and build a socialist society where every young person has the right to learn, to work, to live, and to dream.
Meanwhile, the private sector hoards profits, engages in illicit capital flows, and refuses to invest in job creation. The result is a stagnant economy, unable to absorb new entrants into the labour market. The government’s response—cheap labour schemes like the Expanded Public Works Programme—has failed to eradicate mass unemployment. These schemes offer no long-term prospects, no benefits, and no dignity. Unemployment can only be overcome through job creation. Poverty can only be defeated through decent wages. South Africa’s wealth must be redirected toward productive use by:
- 💰 Halting illicit capital outflows
- 🏦 Enforcing compulsory investment in job creation
- 📈 Raising corporate taxes
But these social aims collide with capitalism’s foundation: private profit. To align production with social need, the commanding heights of the economy must be collectively owned. A centralised, democratically planned economy is essential. This requires the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a democratic socialist society.
🔧 The Need for Systemic Change
The crisis of youth unemployment cannot be solved through piecemeal reforms or short-term interventions. It demands a radical restructuring of society—one that prioritises human development over profit. This means:
- Free, decolonised, and quality education for all
- Guaranteed placement in universities and TVET colleges for all qualifying students
- A public employment programme that offers dignified work at a living wage
- The nationalisation of key industries to create jobs and redirect profits toward social needs
- The abolition of class apartheid in hiring practices and workplace access
Young people must be at the forefront of this struggle. Their energy, creativity, and anger must be channelled into building a revolutionary movement that challenges the foundations of capitalist exploitation. The formation of a Marxist Youth and Students Movement is not just a strategic necessity—it is a moral imperative.
The Future Is Ours to Build
The formation of a Marxist Youth and Student Movement must go beyond reactive protest. It must develop a coherent programme that links immediate youth and student demands to the broader struggle for socialist transformation. This means confronting the structural conditions produced by neoliberal capitalism: mass youth unemployment, the commodification of education, the crisis in schooling, the erosion of academic labour, and the deepening inequalities that shape access, curriculum, and campus life.
Organise or Perish: The Socialist Alternative
The crisis of youth unemployment, mental health, and social exclusion demands more than policy tweaks—it demands systemic change. The youth must rise not as passive victims of capitalism’s decay, but as active agents of transformation. The capitalist system offers no future. The youth must build one.
The answer lies in organisation—militant, democratic, and rooted in socialist principles. must unify youth across schools, universities, townships, and rural areas, linking their struggles to those of workers, women, and communities.
Youth Demands of the MYSM
🛠️ Fight for a living wage R20 000 per month for all full-time workers backed-up by a rigorous regime of workplace inspections under the democratic control of workers’ representatives. Nationalise non-complying big business; based on proven unaffordability, subsidies and tax relief to small and family businesses adequate for the minimum wage to be paid.
✊Demand job creation through a mass programme of public investment in services and infrastructure and democratic planning.
- 🛠️ Fight for a living wage of R20 000 per month for all full-time workers, enforced through democratic workplace inspections and the nationalisation of big businesses that refuse to comply.
- ✊ Demand massive public investment in job creation in services, infrastructure through democratic economic planning to guarantee quality jobs.
- 🗳️ Demand democratic control over hiring and firing, and redesign shift patterns to distribute work fairly among both workers and the unemployed.
- 🚫 Abolish exploitative labour laws, ban labour broking and outsourcing, and transition all EPWP workers into permanent, dignified employment.
- 🛑 Fight all retrenchments and closures with workplace occupations and nationalisation under workers’ control.
- 🤝 Organise the chronically unemployed into active branches led by the trade union movement, maintaining transparent skill registers for fair job allocation.
- 🔗 Uphold permanent union membership and full democratic rights for retrenched workers—once a member, always a member.
- 💼 Expose the bosses’ lies by demanding open business finances; workers’ representatives must scrutinise company accounts, rebutting claims of “unaffordability.”
- 🧠 Address mental health by building support networks, challenging stigma, and demanding comprehensive, state-funded mental health services and accessible drug rehabilitation linked to jobs and community reintegration.
- 🏘️ Resist “waithood” by organising for housing, income support, and social services that empower youth to transition to adulthood with dignity.
- 📚 Fight for free, quality education: Demand the expansion of public universities and TVET colleges, end financial exclusions, and abolish NSFAS delays.
Building the Marxist Youth and Student Movement
A national Marxist Youth and Student Movement must be built to coordinate these struggles, provide political education, and develop leadership rooted in working-class communities. It must reject co-option into ruling party structures and instead align itself with independent worker organisations, community movements, and women’s and feminist collectives committed to systemic change.
The first step is to unify campus-based struggles—against fee exclusions, accommodation shortages, academic precarity, and curriculum alienation—into a single national programme. This programme must be democratically developed and collectively owned by students, not imposed by party-aligned structures or external consultants.
Such a movement must reject the narrow confines of identity politics when divorced from material analysis. The decolonisation demand must be re-rooted in the lived realities of neo-colonial exploitation, racialised and gendered oppression, and class domination. It must expose how these intersect within the education system and society at large.
The MYSM must not stand alone. It must be part of a broader socialist front—united with a Socialist Civic Federation, a Socialist Women’s Movement, and a Confederation of Socialist Trade Unions. Together, these formations must build the Mass Workers Party (MWP) on a revolutionary socialist programme.
Student Mobilisation and Democratic Accountability
Students must reclaim their institutions. The Student Representative Councils (SRCs), which are embedded in university governance structures, must be transformed from passive intermediaries into militant organs of accountability. Many SRCs have been co-opted, implicated in corruption, and disconnected from the real struggles of students. This must change.
Strategic Demands for Youth and Students at Universities
- 🏫 Expand the number of public universities to meet growing demand.
- 👩🏫 Hire more and retain qualified academic and administrative staff with fair wages and benefits
- 👩🏫 Fair wages, secure employment, and professional development for academic and administrative staff.
- 🏫 Expand public sector employment to absorb graduates and trainees
- 🧭 Demand full transparency in university budgets, staffing decisions, and infrastructure planning.
- 🛡️ Campaign for safe campuses, with zero tolerance for sexual harassment and gender-based violence.
- 📢 Expose and resist the commodification of education and the erosion of academic freedom.
- 🔗 Build alliances with workers, academics, and communities to democratise university governance.
- 🧑🎓 Reclaim the SRCs as platforms for radical student representation, rooted in socialist principles.
This mobilisation must go beyond campus boundaries. It must link the crisis in higher education to the broader collapse of public services under neoliberal capitalism. The struggle for decent education is inseparable from the struggle for decent housing, healthcare, transport, and work.
Strategic Demands for Youth and Students in TVET and Community Colleges
Education must no longer be a privilege or a stepping stone to elite assimilation. It must become a tool of collective empowerment, rooted in the needs of the working class and directed toward the building of a socialist society.
Special attention must be given to rural youth, who are four times more likely to participate in public employment schemes than their urban counterparts. Community Colleges must be prioritised in these areas, not as charity, but as a right.
The Marxist Youth and Student Movement must also champion the transformation of post-school education itself. To reclaim vocational education as a legitimate and empowering pathway, youth and students must organise around clear, radical demands:
- 💰 Double the budget allocation for TVET and Community Colleges to match university funding.
- 🏫 Expand the number of public TVET colleges to meet growing demand.
- 👩🏫 Hire and retain qualified academic and administrative staff with fair wages and benefits
- 💰 Increase per-student funding and reverse subsidy cuts.
- 🏫 Expand the number of post-school institutions, especially in rural and working-class areas.
- 🔗 Integrate SETA programmes into public colleges and universities, ensuring learnerships lead to decent, permanent jobs.
- ❌ Abolish exploitative cheap labour schemes like the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).
- 🧑🏫 Fill vacancies and invest in qualified, full-time lecturers and support staff.
- 🛠️ Rebuild the credibility of vocational education through curriculum reform, infrastructure investment, and public campaigns.
- 🏗️ Align with public works programmes by offering education and training that transitions youth into permanent employment in both the public and private sectors.
- 🧭 Serve as “one-stop shops” for accessible learning, especially in rural and underserved areas.
- 🔗 Link formal and non-formal education to community needs, including agricultural skills, artisanal trades, and cooperative development.
- 📚 Curricula that serve social needs, promote critical thinking, and reflect the lived realities of students.
- 🧠 Integration of education with lifelong learning, civic engagement, and democratic participation
- 🌱Prioritise rural development through education hubs and community colleges that serve local needs
🔴 MYSM Demands for Schooling and ECD
Structural Barriers
- 🏚️ Many schools lack basic infrastructure: libraries, laboratories, sport facilities, sanitation, and internet access
- 🔤 Half of Grade 1 learners do not know all the letters of the alphabet
- 📚 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language.
- ❌🔢 Numeracy outcomes mirror literacy: learners lack basic number sense, operations, and problem-solving foundations.
- 📉 STEM subjects are poorly taught or not offered at all—especially in no-fee schools
- 📊 Pressure to improve matric pass rates leads to learners being encouraged to drop Maths and Science in Grade 10
- 🧑🦽 Inclusive education is underfunded and poorly implemented, leaving learners with disabilities behind
- 🔄 Annual disruptions due to delays in school registration, textbooks and stationary delivery and in awarding of contracts for transport and school feeding schemes affect continuity and morale
- 📉 Education expenditure per pupil has declined from R20,000 in 2009 to R16,500 in 2021, with projections dropping to R14,000 over the next three years.
A socialist programme must demand:
- 🏫 Guaranteed universal access to well-resourced, community-based schools
- 📚 Free, quality education with trained teachers and inclusive curricula
- 🧑🏫 End outsourcing and corruption through public ownership and accountability
- 🧠 Integrate education with social support—nutrition, transport, mental health, and safety
- 🏗️ Investment in infrastructure to meet and exceed minimum standards especially in rural and township schools
- 🧱Enforced compliance with the Norms and Standards for Infrastructure in schools
- 📚 Universal access to well-taught STEM subjects, with support for learners and teachers
- 🧑🏫 Massive recruitment of qualified teachers to attain a ratio of twenty learners per teacher over the next five years with improved pay and working conditions and continuing professional development for teachers
- 📚 Guaranteed every child in South Africa the right to read and count by ensuring universal access to structured, mother-tongue literacy and numeracy programmes in the early grades — with trained teachers, coaching support, books and learning materials in every classroom, and clear public targets for Grade 3 reading and numeracy.
- 🧠 Curriculum reform to promote critical thinking, civic engagement, and practical life skills
- ♿ Full implementation of inclusive education, with dedicated funding and trained support staff.
🧸 2. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)
The foundation for learning, care, and survival for working-class children must not be left to the market or household burdens.
- Universal access to free, quality ECD for all children from birth to 6 years old.
- Expand state-funded early learning centres in every working-class community.
- Train and hire ECD practitioners as public servants with decent wages and permanent jobs.
- End reliance on unpaid or underpaid care work, often done by women; recognise and socialise care as public responsibility.
- Publicly funded feeding, healthcare and early stimulation at ECD centres.
- Include ECD centres in all education budgets—not as welfare or NGO work but core state responsibility.
To access the final youth and student platform click on the link below: