June carries a painful contradiction in the South African consciousness. It is the month in which we commemorate the blood of young people who stood against an education system designed to make them submissive, inferior and permanently dependent.
The massacre of June 16 1976 remains one of the darkest indictments against the apartheid state.
Children went into the streets with conviction, and the state responded with bullets.
Yet June, known customarily in isiXhosa as eyeSilimela, also carries another meaning in many African communities.
It is the month of initiation, a sacred period in which young men are withdrawn from ordinary life and taken through a rite of passage that is meant to sharpen them for manhood, responsibility and service. This is where the contradiction lies.
June is unfortunate because it reminds us of the violence suffered by the youth.
But June is also fortunate because custom places young people, especially young men, in a disciplined space where their minds, identity and future can be deliberately shaped.
The problem is we have allowed Youth Month to become too ceremonial.
We gather, we speak, we sing, we remember, and then the young person returns to the same unemployment, the same substance abuse, the same school dropout risks, the same broken family structures, the same poverty, and the same social abandonment.
We must be honest: remembrance without reconstruction is not enough.
If the youth of 1976 fought against a system that denied them a future, then the youth of today are fighting against a reality that has made the future invisible.
From a psychological point of view, adolescence and early adulthood are stages of identity formation.
A young person is asking serious questions, even when those questions are not spoken: Who am I? What is expected of me? Where do I belong? What is my value? How do I survive?
How do I become respected? How do I become economically independent?
How do I handle anger, rejection, poverty, temptation, peer pressure and failure?
When these questions are not answered by responsible structures, they are answered by the street, alcohol, drugs, gangs, social media, destructive masculinity, transactional relationships, and hopelessness.
A young man who is not given a meaningful model of manhood may manufacture one from dominance, violence, sexual conquest, or reckless behaviour.
A young woman who is not affirmed, protected and equipped may be forced to navigate a society that praises her appearance but neglects her safety, dignity and economic independence.
This is why initiation must be understood not only as a cultural ceremony for communities that practice the custom, but as a powerful psychological intervention.
It is one of the few moments where young people are removed from the noise of ordinary life and placed under the authority of tradition and communal expectation.
In that moment, the initiate is receptive. He is listening. He knows he is crossing a boundary. He understands that he is no longer being treated as a child.
As limited or indirectly side-lined by the formal system of acquiring resources, traditional leadership as a governing structure in rural areas have a customary role to restore the full intellectual, moral and developmental value of initiation by influencing households within the liberal system imposed by Eurocentric cultural influence.
The teaching must go beyond endurance and ritual instruction. It must become a structured curriculum of life.
It must prepare young people for the world they are entering, not the world we wish still existed.
A young man leaving initiation today does not only need to know how to conduct himself among elders.
He must know how to deal with unemployment, how to avoid substance abuse, how to respect women, how to manage conflict, how to build a household, how to care for children, how to use land productively, how to understand money, how to preserve his mental health, and how to become useful to his community.
If we fail to teach these things, then we are producing culturally certified young men who are still socially unprepared.
Traditional leadership possesses a form of authority that modern institutions often lack.
Government can issue policies. Schools can deliver syllabuses. NGOs can run workshops. But traditional leadership institution speaks from belonging.
It speaks from ancestry, land, custom and communal memory. It can say to a young person: “You are not alone. You come from somewhere. You carry a name. You carry a clan. Your life must not be wasted.”
Every initiation season should have a recognised developmental programme.
The curriculum does not need to undermine secrecy or sacred custom.
Certain customary teachings must remain within the protected space of the practice.
But alongside those teachings, there must be structured modules that respond to the crisis of the present generation.
The first module should be identity and psychological resilience.
Young people must be taught that pain is not proof of weakness, that asking for help is not cowardice, and that emotional discipline is part of true maturity.
Many young men are carrying fatherlessness, poverty, rejection, grief and humiliation.
If those wounds are not addressed, they often return as violence, alcohol dependency, abuse of women, self-destruction or criminality.
Manhood must never be confused with emotional silence.
A man who cannot govern his own emotions is not yet ready to govern a household, a business, or a community responsibility.
The second module should be be about respect, community and family responsibility.
Initiation must explicitly teach that women are not subjects of male control.
Respect for women cannot be a decorative phrase in custom; it must be a behavioural standard.
The young man must be taught that fatherhood is not only biological, but that also love without responsibility is exploitation, and that no cultural identity gives them permission to abuse, intimidate or neglect.
A society that produces men who fear shame more than they fear wrongdoing has failed.
The third module should be education and lifelong learning.
Not every young person will follow a university route, but every young person must be trained to learn continuously.
The rural economy needs artisans, farmers, mechanics, coders, welders, builders, livestock managers, health workers, logistics operators, environmental monitors and entrepreneurs.
We must stop presenting education as only a classroom matter.
The fourth module should be substance abuse prevention.
Young people must be confronted with the truth about alcohol and drugs.
Substance abuse is not entertainment. It drains households, destroys mental health, feeds violence, and steals economic potential.
The teaching must not only say “do not use drugs”. It must explain why hopelessness makes drugs attractive, why peer pressure works, how addiction captures the brain, and where young people can seek help before the damage becomes permanent.
The fifth module should be entrepreneurship and rural production.
The rural young person must not be taught to see the village only as a place to escape.
Rural areas are not empty spaces. They carry land, livestock, water, indigenous knowledge, culture, tourism potential, agriculture, food systems, medicinal knowledge, crafts, construction needs, logistics gaps and digital opportunities.
The problem is that we have not organised these resources into enterprises that young people can participate in.
During initiation, young men should be exposed to practical enterprise thinking.
They must be taught how to identify a community problem and convert it into a service.
If elderly people struggle to access medication, that is a logistics opportunity.
If farmers cannot reach markets, that is an aggregation opportunity.
If livestock theft is rising, that is a rural safety and technology opportunity.
If roads are poor, that is a maintenance and advocacy opportunity.
If households lack food gardens, that is an agricultural support opportunity.
The sixth module should be civic responsibility and leadership.
The youth of 1976 understood that injustice must be confronted.
Today’s youth must understand that community problems are not solved by complaint alone.
They must know how local government works, what a ward committee is, what a traditional council is, what public participation means, how to report corruption, how to organise legally, and how to demand services without destroying the few assets the community already has.
The same seriousness must apply to young girls during their own moments of cultural formation such as Ingciyo or during Intonjane.
Girls must never be left outside the developmental imagination of traditional leadership.
A community that prepares boys for responsibility but leaves girls to survive by instinct is building imbalance.
Girls need structured teachings on self-worth, bodily autonomy, education, leadership, financial literacy, reproductive health, protection from abuse, entrepreneurship and cultural dignity.
They must be taught that culture is not a cage. It is a source of strength when it protects dignity, expands wisdom and prepares a person for life.
The development of boys and girls must also speak to each other.
Young men must be taught to honour the dignity and agency of young women.
Young women must be supported to become leaders, innovators and economic actors in their own right.
This curriculum should not turn initiation into a classroom. It must preserve the sacred atmosphere of the rite.
But sacredness must not be confused with disorder.
Discipline must not be confused with abuse.
Secrecy must not be used to hide negligence.
Tradition must not be reduced to the cutting of the body while leaving the mind, character and future untouched.
The real test of initiation is not only whether a young man enters and returns.
The real test is what kind of person returns.
Does he return more disciplined? More respectful? More responsible? More prepared? More useful? More aware of his duties? More capable of building something? More protective of women and children? More committed to his education, work and community?
The youth of 1976 did not die so that the next generations could be remembered only in speeches, while being abandoned in practice.
They confronted an education system that was designed to destroy their minds.
Today, we must confront every social system that continues to destroy the minds, confidence and prospects of young people.
The fortunate-unfortunate contradiction of June is therefore a call to action.
It is unfortunate because our memory is soaked in blood.
It is fortunate because customs and traditions still give us a living platform to form young people at the exact moment when they are ready to listen.
Traditional leadership must seize that moment. Government must support it and ring fence extensive budgets.
Families will need to realise that it’s our only weapon in fighting for continuity of our people.
Professionals must contribute to it. Communities must demand it.
Initiation must become a bridge between heritage and the future, between identity and skill, between manhood and responsibility, thus indirectly mitigating on initiation deaths, between womanhood and dignity, between rural life and rural production.
The youth must not be told only that they are the leaders of tomorrow. That phrase has become too comfortable.
Our task is to ensure that when young people emerge from initiation, they do not only carry a new status. They must carry a new strategy for life.
That is how we honour the fallen youth of 1976. That is how we rescue the youth of today.
That is how custom becomes not only memory, but a weapon of reconstruction.
Nkosi Minenkulu Joyi, senior leader of the Baziya Traditional Council, chair of the economic development, tourism & mineral resources committee in the National House of Traditional and Khoi-San Leaders
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