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What Freedom Day means to young people

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21 years since the country’s first democratic free elections, access to education post 1994 has become a priority for young people of all colours.

The struggle for freedom and democracy was a long fought battle but the rewards cannot be measured.

For Wits University Education student Mandy Basson, freedom means equality. “Freedom to me means equality for we can go to whichever school we want to, we can do whatever we want to. It’s just amazing how everybody is coming together,” says Basson.

Basson further adds without the struggle South Africa went though, the youth of the country would not know what freedom means.

“Yes there was apartheid, but I mean it is our history. You won’t be here if it wasn’t for your history, there wouldn’t be a freedom fight and there wouldn’t have been an uprising. People wouldn’t understand what it is to be free, if there wasn’t that colonialism and the apartheid system.”

Another Wits University student, Luyanda says the day reminds her of what the struggle heroes fought for. “Basically what Freedom Day is to us, is a reminder of what those who came before us had to fight for. They had to fight for the next generations and they had to fight to let us do whatever we want to do, like go to Wits and study whatever we want. They basically fought for us to have a choice,” she says.

But not all regard the Freedom Day as an important event. Lethabo Matlala believes the day holds no relevance in her life. “I really respect what happened in those ages, I really respect what happened on the day… But reflecting on what happened on that day to me, it is not really relevant for what is happening in my life now,” says Matlala.

Social and Political Commentator, Professor Tinyiko Maluleke, says young South Africans post 1994 have been living a much better life

Engineering student Karabo Setsumi says freedom means having the right to express one’s views.

“To me freedom means the allowance to express yourself, in a sense that you can do whatever you want… in a sense you have the ability to have education unlike in the Apartheid days when certain demographic when people where separated according to race,” he says.

Social and Political Commentator, Professor Tinyiko Maluleke, says young South Africans post 1994 have been living a much better life. “Young South Africans over the past 21 years have been living in a much better country than young South Africans before 1994. The 21 years before 1994, were years of ungovernable,” says Maluleke.

Maluleke points out that the country has made big strides in the higher education sector.

“I think in the past 21 years we have seen from an education point of view, more participation by black South Africans in the higher education. I think in 1994 we had about 500 000, roughly, students in the higher education sector.”

Maluleke further adds: “In 2012 the number the number was nearly a million of young people participating in higher education.”

– By Neo Motloung

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