The conditions of young people in the CBD of KuGompo City by Lindokuhle Mponco

Walk through the CBD of KuGompo today and ask yourself one question: is this what freedom was supposed to look like? Young people sleeping in abandoned buildings. Young men smoking nyaope before sunrise. Graduates sitting on pavements with CVs nobody will read. Sewage flowing through the streets like it is part of the town’s natural infrastructure. Potholes big enough to damage taxis, businesses collapsing, and police vans driving around after everything has already fallen apart.

This is not “normal”. This is social collapse. South Africa now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. According to Statistics South Africa, youth unemployment for people between 15–34 rose to 46.1% in early 2025, with millions of young people completely excluded from the economy. In reality, many communities know the real number feels much higher. The CBD of KuGompo has become a waiting room for hopelessness. And the worst part? Society has started acting like this is just how young black people are supposed to live.

UbuPhara: The Language of Abandonment

People love insulting young people in the streets. They call them “amaphara”, criminals, junkies and failures. But nobody asks: what created UbuPhara in the first place? Nobody is born wanting to sleep in shop doorways or sniff substances just to survive another day. These conditions are created by poverty, unemployment and social abandonment. When a young person spends years without work, without opportunities and without dignity, society should not be shocked when destruction follows.

Drug abuse in the CBD is no longer hidden. It is visible everywhere. Some young people are using drugs not because they are “evil”, but because hopelessness itself becomes addictive. Escaping reality becomes easier than living in it. Under capitalism, poor youth are treated like rubbish until they become a “crime problem”. Then suddenly politicians want law enforcement and media cameras. But policing poverty is not solving poverty. A young person cannot smoke a CV and become employed.

Crime and Unemployment Are Twins

South Africa’s official unemployment rate reached 32.9% in 2025, while the expanded unemployment rate — which includes discouraged work seekers — climbed above 43%. That means almost half the country is either unemployed or has given up looking for work. In the Eastern Cape, the situation is even worse. The province consistently records some of the highest unemployment figures in the country.

Now think about KuGompo. How many young people wake up every morning with nowhere to go? How many graduates are sitting at home while politically connected people get jobs through corruption and patronage? How many young people survive through gambling, hustling, crime or exploitation because the formal economy has locked them out? Then politicians act surprised when crime increases. Crime is not simply a policing issue. It is an economic issue. A society that refuses to give young people work should never act shocked when survival becomes violent.

The CBD Is Falling Apart

KuGompo’s infrastructure tells its own story. The roads are collapsing. Sewage spills remain unattended for weeks. Streetlights do not work. Public spaces are neglected. Entire sections of the CBD feel abandoned after dark. This is what municipal failure looks like in real life. And it is working-class communities who suffer the most. The rich can move to gated suburbs, drive expensive cars and avoid public infrastructure altogether. The poor cannot escape collapsing municipalities. Infrastructure is political. A city that cannot maintain roads, sanitation and public safety is a city that has stopped caring about its people.

The question young people must ask is simple:

Where is the money going?

Because it certainly is not going into fixing the city.

Haniism-Bikoism: A Different Future

Young people are constantly told there is no alternative. That corruption, unemployment and decay are just “South African problems”. That is a lie. What KuGompo needs is a new political direction rooted in Scientific Socialism with Afrocentric Characteristics — what we may call Haniism-Bikoism. This means combining the revolutionary socialism of Chris Hani with the black consciousness and psychological liberation taught by Steve Biko.

It means understanding that black working-class communities deserve dignity, jobs, housing and democratic power. Imagine if municipalities employed young people directly to:

• repair roads,

• clean communities,

• fix sewage systems,

• renovate abandoned buildings,

• build public housing,

• establish youth cooperatives,

• and run rehabilitation centres.

Imagine if public money served communities instead of tenders. That is Municipal Socialism. Not slogans. Real material change.

Register to Vote — Or Accept More Decay

Many young people say voting changes nothing. But refusing to participate while corrupt politicians continue governing changes even less. Elections alone will never liberate the working class. Real change requires organisation, political education and mass struggle. But voting remains an important weapon. At local government level, ideology matters.

Who controls municipalities determines:

• where money goes,

• who gets jobs,

• which communities develop,

• and whether public resources serve people or politically connected elites.

The Economic Freedom Fighters remains the most credible socialist-oriented political alternative capable of laying the foundations for Municipal Socialism in South Africa. The coming local government elections are not simply about councillors. They are about deciding whether cities like KuGompo continue collapsing or begin rebuilding around the needs of the working class. Because if young people do not shape the future politically, they will continue suffering economically.

And the truth is painful:

A society that abandons its youth is already dying.