Marketing Announcement

Space Summary

The Twitter Space Marketing Announcement hosted by RealFlokiInu. Explore the $FLOKI cryptocurrency world with a focus on community engagement, utility, and charity initiatives. Discover how $FLOKI strives to become a leading cryptocurrency globally by emphasizing transparency, community involvement, and philanthropic contributions. Join the official $FLOKI Telegram for updates and insights into the evolving landscape of cryptocurrencies.

For more spaces, visit the Marketing Agency page.

Questions

Q: What are the core values of $FLOKI cryptocurrency?
A: Community engagement, utility, and charity form the core values of $FLOKI.

Q: Where can one find official $FLOKI announcements and updates?
A: Official announcements and updates are available on the provided Telegram link.

Q: How does charity fit into the $FLOKI ecosystem?
A: Charity is a significant component of $FLOKI, aligning with its mission and values.

Q: What is $FLOKI’s mission in the cryptocurrency space?
A: $FLOKI aims to become the most recognized and utilized cryptocurrency globally.

Q: Why is community involvement crucial for $FLOKI’s success?
A: Community involvement is vital for the growth and prominence of $FLOKI as a cryptocurrency.

Q: What role does transparency play in the $FLOKI community?
A: Transparency is a core value that guides communication and engagement within the $FLOKI community.

Q: How does engaging with $FLOKI benefit individuals?
A: Engaging with $FLOKI offers learning, collaboration, and contribution opportunities.

Q: What insights can exploring $FLOKI provide about the cryptocurrency landscape?
A: $FLOKI exploration offers valuable insights into the evolving cryptocurrency space.

Q: In what ways can joining the $FLOKI community be advantageous?
A: Joining the $FLOKI community opens doors to understanding its initiatives and goals.

Q: Why is understanding the utility of $FLOKI important?
A: Comprehending $FLOKI’s utility contributes to its mission of recognition and adoption.

Highlights

Time: 00:15:45
Importance of Community in $FLOKI Exploring how community engagement drives the success and growth of $FLOKI.

Time: 00:25:22
Charity Initiatives by $FLOKI Understanding the impact of charity contributions within the $FLOKI ecosystem.

Time: 00:35:10
Mission of $FLOKI Cryptocurrency Delving into $FLOKI’s mission to become a leading player in the global cryptocurrency market.

Time: 00:45:55
Transparency Values in $FLOKI Community Examining how transparency fosters trust and communication within the $FLOKI community.

Time: 00:55:30
Utility and Purpose of $FLOKI Understanding the practical applications and objectives of $FLOKI cryptocurrency.

Key Takeaways

• The $FLOKI cryptocurrency emphasizes community engagement, utility, and charitable contributions.
• Official announcements and updates can be found on the provided Telegram link.
• Charity plays a significant role in the $FLOKI ecosystem, aligning with its mission and values.
• The $FLOKI cryptocurrency aims to achieve widespread recognition and adoption globally.
• Community involvement is key to the success and growth of $FLOKI as a prominent cryptocurrency.
• Transparency in communication and engagement is a core value within the $FLOKI community.
• Exploring the world of $FLOKI offers insights into the evolving landscape of cryptocurrencies.
• Joining the $FLOKI community provides opportunities for learning, collaboration, and contribution.
• Understanding the utility and purpose of $FLOKI contributes to its mission of becoming a well-recognized cryptocurrency.
• Engagement with the $FLOKI cryptocurrency ecosystem can lead to a deeper understanding of its initiatives and goals.

Behind the Mic

Introduction and Purpose of the Twitter Space

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. My name is Lynette Manzini, and I’d like to welcome you today’s Twitter space, actually known as the x space. Today’s x space, where we want to talk about how Saddak youth are driving positive change through civic action. As you are all aware, the 44th Saddak summit will be held in Zimbabwe this year. President Ms. Nangagwa is chairing the Sadak summit. And normally when this, you know, on the sidelines of the Sadak summit, when the ministers and government are meeting, the people hold their own summit. And this is one such activity where we are meeting today as the citizens of Sadak, as concerned citizens, as engaged citizens, as citizens who are utilizing civic action, who want to evaluate what our governments are doing, what our leaders are doing. In any project, you roll out a plan, you monitor and evaluate.

Engagement of Citizens in Civic Action

I think this is what we are going to be doing here as the citizens at the sidelines of this Saddak summit. Like I mentioned earlier on, my name is Lynette Manzini, and I have speakers who are going to be helping us to kick start this conversation. So they will get us into the conversation, and then later we will open up to the floor to also engage in this particular conversation. Our topic is rise up, how Saddak youth are driving positive change through civic action. And, you know, when I interacted with this topic, I was looking at civic action and the responsibility of citizens, of individuals to address a social issue, be it economic, political, and social. And I was saying to myself, by the time you are driving positive change through civic action, you have already identified a problem. And I want to take us back to a few weeks, maybe a month ago, actually.

Recent Youth Protests Across Africa

In June, Kenyan youths were protesting against a finance bill they took to the streets. They mobilized through TikTok. They were demanding for accountability and transparency. A couple of weeks later, the protest wave moved to Uganda. They were also protesting for the same accountability and transparency. And Nigeria also came into the folds, and they were also protesting. They were, you know, issues to do with jobs, issues to do with hunger were issues that they were protesting against. What does this mean? You know, this is a continental issue. These are not Sadaq countries per se. But can one say that there’s a wave, you know, on the african continent where youths are rising up, you know, and trying to drive this positive change? What kind of environments are youths living in? What are they experiencing? What is the situation on the ground?

Introduction of Speaker Vivid Guede

And I’m going to begin with my first speaker, Vivid Guede. He is a developmental practitioner. Welcome to the program. Thanks, Lynette. And I hope you are hearing me loud and clear. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for joining. And thank you for the invitation to this discussion about, really, youths and Sadak and what role youth can play in the process of developing the region. So, I mean, looking at the topic, what are you doing? I think there are many people, I have fellow speakers who can speak more in terms of the nitty gritties of the actions that our youths are doing in the region. But, I mean, from an eagle’s eye perspective, I think you can see that there have been some actions from Sadak youths.

Historical Context and Youth Movements

Remember, there was the fees must fall movement, which really showed and energized youth in the region, beginning to talk about critical issues of development in the region. In terms of the education sector, you’ve also seen previously the Zimbabwe lies matter. We have had certain actions within the region, in different countries. We have also had youths, you know, forming regional organizations to build solidarity. So. But I wanted us to really ground this conversation to say that. And I have really three points to make in terms of that, which is that the beginning point, I think, is to understand, for you to understand the history of the region. And the next point is about really building solidarity. And the other one is about building accountability or seeking accountability in the region.

Understanding regional history and its significance

So I think the beginning point, the beginning biggest civic action that youths in the region can do is to begin to understand Sadak as a political construct, as a historical construct. What is the history of Sadak? How did it come about that we have this regional bloc? What were the historical processes that led to this reality? And you would find that there were certain solidarities, moments of solidarities, moments of struggle that happened in the region that led to the formation of the Saddak region. From the frontline states to the Sadiq and now to Sadak, this is important. I mean, understanding this history is important, you know, understanding this history from the source rather than history as mediated by interested voices, for instance, in the governments and in the state media, the apologists in the state media.

Need for Civic Consciousness Among Youth

So you need to really engage with this history in order to understand the warps and fears that history projects onto the present. So what are the hopes that people in the Saddak region had when they were fighting for independence, when they came together as frontline states? But what were the fears? What were the things that they feared also could go wrong? And what has gone wrong and what has not gone wrong. This is very important, I think, as the beginning of consciousness in the region. So when you look at the Saddak treaty, for instance, you find that it begins by saying that we, the head of states and government, rather than, you know, we the people of the Saddak region.

Challenges within the SADC Treaty Framework

And this is part of the history of Sadak. This is. I mean, the Saddak treaties is part of what I would call our social contract in the region. And when you look at what is happening right now, you see that Saddak has really been called a club of the regimes. There’s this feeling that people are not being engaged in the process of regional integration, in the process of developing Saddak institutions, in the process of developing Sadag programs for development. And I think this is one of the beginning points of these challenges, the way the Saddak is framed as an organization. The Saddak treaty begins by saying we the heads of state instead of saying, we the people. So that is one point.

Youth Solidarity and Engagement

And I think this comes from, really the fact that there is this understanding of Sadak, especially at the levels of the leaders of Sadak as a community of the heads of state, of the states. And this is why you see there’s so much emphasis on sovereignty of the states in Sadak rather than sovereignty of the people of Sadak. So Sadak is really built on sovereignty of the states rather than popular sovereignty or what some philosophers, like Rousseau, called the general will. So I think it’s important for Saddak youth to understand this history. Why? I think this will also be important.

Building Transnational Solidarity

The next point that I’m going to talk about, which is that after understanding this history it is very important for Sadak youths to begin to build transnational solidarity, transnational organizations having built this consciousness of us being in this collective that we call Sadak, but also this collective that is hanging above our society, our heads and not really engaging with the community of the region. And so I think this is the second point that I wanted us to really engage with and understand and build this solidarity based on the contemporary challenges. What are the contemporary challenges?

The Context of Inequality in the SADC Region

We are seeing that in Sadak, we have some of the most unequal countries in the world. I mean, South Africa, Namibia has been mentioned in those times. You also have Africa’s last absolute monarch in the Saddak region. You also have some of the most poorest countries that are struggling. You’ve also had a country that has had these challenges of some of the highest inflation rates. And we have rampant unemployment in the Saddak region. These are some of the challenges that we are confronting. And the challenge is that youths in the region need to build solidarity around. And we could take advantage then of contemporary tools like the digital spaces that we have today, that we are using even for this meeting to build that contemporary solidarity.

Holding Leaders Accountable

Also, it’s important to then build regional organizations to connect people to people in order to. Coming to my third point, hold the leaders to account. The Saddak treaty does say that the leadership is mindful of the need to involve the people of the region centrally in the process of development and integration. I’m quoting particularly through the guarantee of democratic rights, observance of human rights, and the rule of law. But is this the reality that is transpiring in terms of regional integration? Do we see democratic rights being consolidated? Do we see the observance of human rights? Do we see generally the workflow in the region?

Youth Responsibility in Democratic Governance

So this is, I think, some of the things that the Saddak youths then need to hold the leadership of the region to account, you know, in trying to emphasize the idea of that Sadak should be something that is owned by the citizens of Sadak. It should be a democratic platform for engagement for citizens of the region. It should go beyond the leadership. It should go beyond the head of states and government. It should go beyond the Sadak ministers. It should really go down to the people of the region and engage with the challenges that the people are facing. But that engagement with those challenges cannot happen in an environment where there is no democratic space, there is no observance of human rights, and there is no respect of this social contract that the Saddak treaty is, which talks about some of the things that I’ve already mentioned, like human rights, democracy and rule of law.

Youth-Specific Issues in SADC Engagement

There are youth specific issues that also SADAC is committed to, which also, I think, youth in the region need to hold the leaders account. For instance, the Saddak Youth Forum, the Saddak Youth Program, the Saddak Declaration on Youth Development, empowerment. There’s the Sadak Youth empowerment policy framework. These are some of the things where youths can build civic actions around engaging the leaders, engaging the regional blog to hold them, to account on these particular commitments. But also, it’s about also youths holding the leaders accountable, even for the commitments that have not been made, that have been omitted by the leaders.

Challenges Faced by Youth in the Region

As I have said, that the history of Sadak that we have, or that is, I mean, privileged in public discourses is the history of. That is mediated by interested voices and those who are powerful institutions of government, the governments and the apologies in the media, the state controlled media, media in different countries. I mean, there’s the challenge, like youth unemployment. I think it’s one of the rampant challenges, the common challenges that youth have in the region. I think there is also need for youth in the region to come together to build solidarity around some of these things. The reason why I’m emphasizing the issue of solidarity is that, you know, this is the history of Saddak.

Historical Foundations of SADC Solidarity

The history of Saddak has been a history of solidarity. There’s been a history of working together across countries to shape a more democratic environment, shape to achieve freedom. Even from the colonial era to the present, there’s been this movement from a democratic kind of governance to something, to an imaginary that is centered around freedom, around inclusivity, around prosperity, but also around equality and poverty eradication. So these are some of the, I think, issues that need to come up to our minds, coming to our minds when we talk about Sadat, when we talk about duty, civic actions in the region. So I just say this in order to spark the conversations.

Spotlight on Specific Regional Challenges

I think we can engage further with these issues as we progress with the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Vivid, for giving us this helicopter view, you know, taking us back to where, to the founding principles of Sadak. And, you know, you critique that this. You know, this regional body is premised on, you know, the state and forgets about the people themselves. This should be something that opens up to the people so that they are part of the processes. It shouldn’t just be for ministers and presidents, but also for the people. And you highlight very important issues here. Solidarity. The youths in the region should build solidarity, work together, build regional organizations, because the challenges that they face are similar.

Promoting Educational Access for Youth

Thank you very much for that. You know, you took us back to the fees must fall. You know, education is a right. Every youth should be able to access education. But is that the case on the ground? Why are these fees out of reach for many? And, you know, what is. What is our role as young people? What is our role as young people to, you know, to challenge this? And, you know, I think the Fisma fall protest helped to show that issues to do with Zimbabweans lives matter. You know, every life in the Saddak region, every life matters. Thank you very much for that.

Introduction to Rutiendo Mudimu

Allow me at this moment in time to welcome Rutiendo Mudimu. She is from the Youth empowerment Trust. Yes. Yeah, that’s Ruitendo. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much, Lynette, for having me. Good morning, everyone. As noted by Linnet, my name is. Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry for that. Go ahead.

The Challenges of Youth Employment

No worries. As I highlighted by Lynus, my name is Ruthendo Catherine Mudimu. I’m representing youth empowerment and Transformation Trust, having been part and parcel of civil society organizations as well as youth empowerment work this year, marking my fifth year working with grassroots organizations, national organizations, as well as some regional organizations as well. Lynette, I think I. Okay. No, that’s fine. It’s okay. So thank you very much for, you know, for that introduction. Maybe if you can just walk us through, you know, I think Vivid touched on this, and, you know, he was highlighting how young people on the continent are battling with unemployment.

Youth Representation in the Economy

You know, not just, you know, in the Saddak region, but the continent. Youths make up the bulge of the population. But in terms of participation, you know, how well are they represented? But maybe just zeroing it back. Zeroing it in on Sadak. How well represented are youths in the economy? And maybe if you can talk to us about the Zimbabwean situation, issues to do with unemployment, young people, are they able to venture into the economy? How accessible is it for them to start businesses and issues like that? Maybe if you can talk to us about that.

Exploring Unemployment in Zimbabwe

Thank you so much, Lynette, and also thank you to the previous speaker for making the foundation for this conversation. So to say, in terms of unemployment, we have seen how many of the youths, not only in Sadiq, as you mentioned, but also on the continent, are unemployed. Right. So this also then brings to highlight how the voices of the young people are also less represented when it comes to the economy. To the economy, not only of the country or the Sadak region, but also the continent as a whole. We find that there are also some youths who are making breakthroughs in terms of the economic space, but it’s not as high a rate as we, the youth, would want it to be.

Youth Agency and Civil Society Support

So you find how, in issues that directly affect us as the youth, our voices are not as well represented in such spaces. So now we having incidences where we have civil society organizations coming into play to assist the youth. As to how then do you then get to voice out to ensure that we, as the youth, not only in the Sadak region but also in the continent, have our voices heard and also are given the space to actively participate and contribute to the economy of the region and also the continent, but also zeroing it down to the economy of the different countries? I’m speaking particularly for Zimbabwe as a nation, but generally speaking, as highlighted by the previous speaker, unemployment is one of the biggest challenges that the youths, or the young people, I should say, are facing, not only in Zimbabwe, but in other surrounding countries that surround Zimbabwe.

Structural Barriers to Youth Employment and Participation

As a whole. So it is one of the biggest challenges that we are seeing the youth of Zimbabwe and also Saddak countries face today. And as well as them being cognizant of the fact that they are not given, should I say, the platform to actively participate or to contribute. Now, that’s where we’re having different organizations coming in through the different civic actions to ensure that the youth then are given the power not only to actively participate, but also to be able to create spaces that enable them to be part and parcel of the economic growth and also to be able to be part of the employed percentages of the different countries.

The Importance of Bridging Gaps for Youth

Thank you very much, Ruttendo, for that. She echoes the sentiments by Vivid there, and she says that the issue of unemployment is a problem on the continent, and this also then means that less representation of young people in the economy. And it’s important for us to deal with this issue. And, you know, that’s why we’re having this conversation. So in case you’re just joining us, this is the Sadak people summit Twitter space, brought to you by Magamba. We lead free to express open Pali and the southern African People’s Solidarity Network. And the topic for today’s space is rising up, how Saddak youth are driving positive change through civic action.

Problem Identification and Youth Challenges

For one, like I mentioned earlier on, to drive positive change through civic action, you have to identify the problem. And I guess youths in this region have lived. They don’t even have to identify because they live these problems, the high unemployment rate and the challenges they have to face in regards to the economy. I want to bring in Danai Chirau. She is a decolonial feminist theorist. And, Danai, I want you to. You know, when we’re talking about the youth is a hetero, you know, a heterogeneous group. And I want you to focus on the. On the, you know, on the female, the girl child on the continent.

Gender-Based Economic Challenges for Youth

Rutiendo was just giving us an overview of all the youth, but what are the specific challenges economically, if we can just stick on the economic cluster that the girl child, the youth is facing in the Sadak region. Okay, thank you so much, Lynette. I hope you can hear me. Just confirm for me that you can. Hear what I’m saying loud and clear. Okay? So I’m glad that we talked about understanding our history, right? Because our history gives us insight into our current situations and possibly into our future. Let’s say if we continue to perpetuate the same narratives, we’re highly likely to reach the same outcome, because possibly we’re making cosmetic changes to our situation without digging deeper into exactly where it derives and how it affects us presently.

Understanding History’s Impact on Current Challenges

So we must understand current challenges we face or we’re currently facing through the lens of everything. It’s essentially a whole process, view, analysis and understanding of our history. And this involves dealing intimately with our own personal history as Zimbabweans, the effects of imperialism on African states and post colonies, our history with the British, the Dutch and Europe in general through the scramble and partition for Africa, which we learn about in our history books. So in that way we understand things from the point of colonization, coloniality and being a former colony of the British, how the processes involved in colonialization ultimately changed our trajectory as a people and as a social group, etc.

Revisiting Historical Narratives and Genocides

This will give us a deeper understanding of things like tribal wars, which at worst have led to genocides like Gukurawundi. What is the effect on Zimbabwe to contribute to regional development post such history? What are the intersectionalities between the different facets of society being the economics, the social, the cultural, etc. This forces us to seek for new ways of excavating and understanding our history because we have to be mindful of who holds the narrative. There are certain stereotypes that have been created and they have scathing marks for people in history, especially within our leadership.

Including Diverse Perspectives in Historical Narratives

So a wider engagement in our history, our colonial history, from the lens of women of gender, minorities, who at present form part of a large demographic in Sadak and in Zimbabwe, young people, young women, young people within marginalized groups and those that are vulnerabilized by the system. For a long time we have been forced to deal with what we perceive to be the bread and butter issues. So we say, oh no, let’s not deal with this issue because we’re still dealing with bread and butter issues. We’re only dealing with economic issues, which oftentimes leads to creating surface level and maybe cosmetic strategies that deal with the final layer of the problem as opposed to probing the source.

Reframing Economic Perspectives for the Youth

So when we look at Zimbabwe within the context of regional economic zones, how we understand our economics and what we focus on, specifically things like production, distribution and consumption, which calculates human life statistically without accounting for our nuanced realities and really engaging intimately with our history, we have to find new ways of interacting with our economy and to incorporate things like sexual reproduction, care, work equality, visibility of work, power sharing, emphasis of the work, care and sexual reproductive health, a human rights framework, things like bodily autonomy and integrity, non discrimination, embracing our as human beings and also specifically our planetary boundaries, which brings in the conversation on our climate.

Access to Essential Resources for Young Women

This will make issues like access to sanitary wear, essentially bread and butter issues, because it affects a girl’s capacity to learn, to work, to earn, to participate, and to be, changes how they contribute to being vulnerabilized. Young women or young people, you will understand that gender-based violence is directly linked to the economy because the suppression of a group leads to limited capacity to contribute effectively, to grow, and even to become so there is no youth engagement without acknowledging all the identities that exist within the broader group of youths.

Empowerment and Structural Changes Needed

Our capacity to participate starts in house. So the country needs to work for all young people first. Yeah, that’s my contribution. Thank you very much, Danai. The country needs to work for everyone first. So, you know, each country in the Sadak region needs to work for everyone. So while we have youths, we also have young women within this youth demographic, and they face their own challenges, like, you know, Danae highlights here issues to do with our history.

Addressing the Gender Gap in Economic Participation

Why is it that the males dominate the economic spaces? We need to go back to our history and try to undo and bring out and look at the problems, our foundational problems, so that we can address these issues. Who owns the means of production? So if, you know, there’s a disadvantage there for women in terms of owning means of production, then how do you expect a young person, a young woman, to penetrate into the economy and to make it within this economic cluster? She also highlights issues to do with sexual reproductive health.

Broader Impacts of Gender-Based Challenges

And as you. I was thinking of issues to do with child marriages, gender-based violence. These young women, when they face these challenges, you know, they have a negative impact on their economic participation. You know, when your body and mind are not in a good place, when you’ve been violated, how then do you go out and, you know, and try to find a space, you know, for yourself in this economic space, others end up dropping out of school. How will they make money, you know, within this region, if they are not educated, who is going to employ them? So all these issues, you know, are issues that come to mind.

Closing Reflections

Thank you very much for that, Danai. Liam, thank you very much for joining us. I want to welcome Liam Kadenga. He is with Action Aid Zambia. Welcome to the program. Okay. Thank you, Lynette. good crossing paths with you again after a long time. most definitely. And before you. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. No, you wanted to say something. You said before. What?

Shifting Discussion Towards Democracy

Okay, I. I just wanted you to, you know, were talking about the economy, but I want this conversation to shift now and look at, you know, issues to do with democracy itself. You are working in Zambia. I don’t know whether you can give us, you know, walk us through the situation. You know, give us a situational analysis of, you know, the democratic space in Zambia in as far as it relates to the youth. To what extent do they participate? You know, how. To what extent are they in the House of Assembly? Are they coming up as just voters, or are they candidates themselves? Maybe if you can just walk us through that.

Insights into Youth Participation in Zambia

Okay, thank you, Lynette. So, for introduction sake, yes. My name is Liam Takura Kaminga, and I am a political scientist by qualification. And I am currently working with Action Aid Zambia as the international social movements inspirator. So, to get straight into Lynette’s demands of the question or today’s topic on a contextual level, Zambia has an intricate history that is also connected to political developments that have occurred to in its neighboring countries, especially that they are under the new popular term of a new dawn government.

Understanding Democratic Transitions in Zambia

And you should understand that in Zambia, the democratic transition of power is a normal situation to their context. It’s normal for a ruling government to lose power and hand over to a new government. And it’s always normal for people to participate in elections and hold politicians accountable through the ballot. That’s. It’s a normal phenomenon. However, historically in Zambia, it hasn’t been easy to consolidate democracy as a system of governance.

Defining Democracy Beyond Elections

And when we are looking at democracy as a system of governance, I know people usually just have the imagination of elections. They just have the imagination. I don’t know whether it’s my network, but I seem to be losing. Liam Danai, can you confirm? Can you hear Liam?

Technical Issues and Introduction to the Summit

No, I can’t. Okay, so, Liam, if you can hear me, try exiting and then coming back in. Your Internet seems to be a bit erratic there. Yeah. So, I mean, while we’re waiting for him to join us, in case you’re just joining us, this is the Sadak people summit x space. And today we’re talking about how Sadak youth are driving positive change through civic action. The 44th Sadak summit is being held here in Harare, Zimbabwe. And the people are having their side summit. The people summit. While ministers and their, you know, and leaders and the leaders of our SADC nations are meeting at the Sadak summit with the people are meeting on the sidelines and having our conversation, you know, to do with the issues that we’re facing on the continent. And some of the issues here that have been raised, economic challenges, the unemployment, you know, representation in the economic sector.

Discussion on Democratic Space and Youth Participation

And were now moving on to. Before Liam’s network dropped, were moving on to the democratic space. How accessible is it for the young person? You know, we’ve seen, I think it was earlier. Were in August, right? So it was earlier this month or late in July when students, you know, students union, students from the Zimbabwe, from Zenasu students union were arrested, you know, when they had conducted their own. When they were conducting their own meeting. And what does this mean to freedom of association, freedom of, you know, expression? We’ve seen the arrests of leaders in civil society organizations. You know, they were traveling to one area, you know, to Victoria Falls, arrested at the airport. What exactly does this mean, you know, for our democratic space? Maybe if I can bring you back in vivid. Yes, Lynette, thanks for that.

Challenges in the SADC Region

So I think it goes back again to what I was sort of driving it in the beginning of this conversation that we have this problem of our societies in the Saddak region. Instead of being more connected, they are containerized in these democratic constructs called the states. And there’s been a difficult kind of phenomenon in terms of how also the regional community responds to hold each other accountable to some of the values that have been indicated as commitments for the region, including, like I said, democracy. I mean, is there in the Saddak treaty, like I mentioned earlier, there has been this failure. I think, let’s put it like that states are failing to live up to this commitment. And part of it is also because of this way in which Sadak has been understood from those who.

Understanding History for Future Liberation

I mean, from those who have power in this region as a region that is, in which history has ended. So the idea that we, because we got independence, there is no history, new history that can be created except for people to be content with what is happening now. We are free. And so this is the end of history. I think this is also one of the challenges that we in the region. This is why I said so. Saddak youths need to understand our history. What was that history about? So that we understand whether this framing of an end of history in the region is. I mean, is germane to the goals of Sadak and the goals of regional integration. If we understand history as something that is continuing, then we understand that our history is based on the idea that people needed to expand freedoms, you know, in a.

Youth’s Role in Shaping Democratic Accountability

I mean, as a. As a continuing process. So after liberation, still there is need to expand freedoms. There is need to keep on, you know, reaching the highest possibility, possibilities of freedom in the region, of democracy in the region, economic inclusion and prosperity. And so, by understanding this fact that we had these warps as part of our history, we begin also as. I mean, as a new generation, also as young people, to begin to also want to, I mean, make new history in the region. In terms of the new possibilities that are there new possibilities to do with constructing democratic states, new possibilities to deal with expanding economic freedoms. There are commitments that have been made at the regional level, like the Saddak industrialization strategy and so on.

Youth Engagement and Challenges of Representation

What does that mean in terms of making sure that we deal with some of the challenges, like youth unemployment? So I think by understanding that history, we will be able to build the solidarity that I was talking about, that because our history is the history of solidarity, history of working together as regional people in achieving freedom. It is that history which should continue amongst this generation of young people working together again, building transnational solidarity again, in order to deal with the contemporary political challenges that we have in the region, so that we expand the possibilities in terms of citizen participation, citizen engagement and democratic accountability. We have had challenges, I mean, throughout the region, to do with our elections, like I said, also we have some of the countries.

Navigating Financial and Political Obstacles

We have countries that have some of the biggest challenges in terms of democratic consolidation. We have one of the last absolute monarchs in Africa. We have countries that have had, and I mean, tenuous electoral processes. And so this is, I think, something that then needs to be engaged with in terms of. At a regional level, because of also the fact that states, on their own, they are powerful, you know, they have the means to sort of limit what citizens can do. But I, through transnational solidarity, were able to realize more citizen power and more citizen voice. I think that was also the reality, even during the colonial era, that people were containerized within these colonies.

Community and Collective Struggles

But through solidarity, managed to break the boundaries of the state, the sovereignty of the state, in order to expand the sovereignty the. Of the people. So this is still the process. This is still the historical process that is happening in the region. I think the injunction by Kwame Nkrumah, that Sikhi faced the political kingdom and always will be added unto you, has proved not to be, has not been vindicated within our region. We did get political independence, but also not everything else was added into our countries by that fact. So we need to understand this is and then see what are the possibilities for us as citizens to engage with a new kind of history, a new kind of social process, social and political process in the region.

Reflection on Historical Independence

Thanks. Thank you very much, vivid. And I like the way that you are re emphasizing, you know, for us to go back to where it all started. What does this, you know, this body represent? What are the founding principles? What have we gained right now, you know, in the past? And what is it that we should achieve in the future? Future? And while, yes, we still have, you know, one of the remaining monarchs, we managed to, you know, to be liberated from, you know, from the colonial powers. But then some of these, you know, these, what can I say? The political parties that helped us to fight these, you know, the movements that helped us to fight this seem to be holding young people to ransom to the old history that vivid is talking about.

Addressing Youth Aspirations in Political Spaces

Yes, we managed to. We are liberated, but now there’s a new form of liberation that is required. Young people want to participate. Young people want access to capital, access, you know, they want to sit on the table. But then, you know, you have those that are older than young people, you know, holding on to power, holding on to these offices. How will a young person after university then, you know, get experience? You know, some organizations will tell you want someone with 15 years experience, ten years experience, but somebody is coming out of university and they are unemployed. Where will they get that experience from? Now, you know, he’s talking about, we now need to create new history. Yes, we are thankful for the old history.

Examining Women’s Participation in Politics

We’re thankful for what others did in the past. But we also need to be futuristic. Look at our contemporary issues, like vivid highlights, and deal with those particular problems. I want to bring back Danai. Danai talked to us about young women’s participation in Zimbabwe, if you like, but focusing on the region in politics, because in politics, and in the democratic space in politics, are they able to participate within political parties in National assembly? Are they there? In Zimbabwe in particular, we have 60 seats reserved for women. And recently, you know, the constitution was amended, and we now have ten seats for the youths. Are those enough? And are these young people, you know, bringing about the much needed change or debate that young people, you know, are crying for? Danai, you can go ahead.

Challenges of Women’s Political Representation

Okay. Thank you for this question, particularly because this is something that I study for my thesis. I was looking at women’s political participation and trying to understand what it takes to say that women are actually adequately participating in democratization or democratic processes. So if you look at our constitution from 2013, which is the current constitution, it created this quota system that you mentioned, and it reserved seats for women in the national assembly. And the conceptualization behind that was that if we increase access to these spaces, then more women can see themselves represented within our leadership and within our law and policymaking systems and structures. But what we quickly realized was that the process that it took and the process that is idealized through our au, through Saddak, just in general around the world of creating quotas for minorities, creating quotas for systems, did not, was not operationalized in a way that we hoped it would be operationalized, because you start to realize that politics is at play at the end of the day.

The Nuance of Political Context in Quota Systems

So as women, we participate through specific Patreon and party lines. So it was depending on how the parliament already was constituted. So if you were a private candidate, for example, an independent candidate, sorry, then you probably had no chance of even entering this political space through the quota system. If you’re a young person, you probably did not have a chance to enter the system or to participate or to. To gain from this quota system. And then there’s so many other minorities or other forms of vulnerability that we didn’t even account for when were doing this. One of the things that I found quite unnerving working with, you know, parliament, particularly women’s caucus, was some of the people that were put within these structures, these quota systems, didn’t really know how to read or write yet.

Capacity Gaps in Representation

Part of being a legislature is about creating the law. What? I’m not saying that it’s a problem for someone to, nothing, be formally educated. I’m saying that it’s showing that there was a capacity gap. There was a gap in the way that this person could contribute because they’re already dealing with the egos of politicians, one. And then you’re already dealing with the fact that you do not have the capacity to comprehend certain things or to participate adequately. So your arguments sometimes are seen not to hold water when they’re having their debates in parliament. All those debates that you see, if you read the Hansard, you will notice that a lot of them do not speak up on anything simply because they were specifically chosen to occupy space, but not to occupy change, or not to occupy space in a way that spurs change.

Quotas and Their Impact on Women in Politics

Of course, there were a lot of benefits to this system because it was showing women that they can. It was showing women health systems work. It was also form of education. But really, to what extent, considering that it does not happen in isolation, where history stops for them to learn and to get things, and then the politics starts. The politics was continuing with or without them. So when you look at the quota system, you start to see that maybe, perhaps it was kind of flawed. And this is the same thing that is being, you know, said to be something that should work within the Saddak region for countries. We’re looking at Rwanda as, you know, even though it’s not in Sadiq.

Exploring Rwanda’s Representation Model

We’re looking at Rwanda as like the face of equality when it comes to representation within position of leadership. But also that nuance is lacking of the history of Rwanda and the fact that already in terms of numbers, the women were far outnumbering the men to begin with. I’m not saying that men do not rule countries where there minority, but I’m saying the history of Rwanda will show you, and also even the political will to make changes that go far beyond representation kind of existed in the beginning. And it’s different from the political world within our own country or within our own region to ensure that these positions are not merely representation and cosmetic, but are actually causing specific change.

Reconceptualizing Economic Strategies

So it’s about reconceptualizing how, like, our strategies have to be very inclusive, very intersectional. And I wanted to get into something else briefly around the way that we conceive things. You know, the way that we understand our economies and the way we calculate things like GDP, which is gross domestic product, how we look at consumption, investment, government spending, net exports, etc. If we are going to be forward facing and futuristic, then we need to probe and investigate why we’re still, you know, working with this kind of formula and instead look formulas that really take into account the people.

People-Centered Economic Growth

And there’s this emerging formula called growth depends on people and the environment. That is an important way for us to look at and understand our economy because our economy is a result of everything else. And if everything else is in shambles, then our economy will be reflective of that. Thanks. Thank you very much for that. If our economy is reflective of everything else, then I had it in my head, but I lost it now. But, you know, you’re talking about how growth depends on people and the environment.

Integrating Gender and Economic Considerations

And it’s very important for us to look at things differently. We can, you know, you were talking about how we calculate our gross domestic product, but you’re saying, let’s look at people and the environment. How are the people? What are we doing to the environment and issues to do like that? And I think earlier on you spoke about care, work that goes unnoticed. You know, those hours, it’s, you know, they should be quantified and actually a dollar sign should be put on them so that we know how much women are contributing to the economy. Rottena, I want to bring you in.

Challenges Faced by Young Women in Politics

You know, I’ve had a couple of times, numerous of times, that young women fail to participate in politics. For instance, you know, run as candidates because of resources. What are you doing as, how have you assisted, or rather, how are young people, you know, in the region or focusing on Zimbabwe? How are they faring? What are they doing to try to change this? Because sometimes if you not, sometimes if you want to be part of the change, you might also need to get into parliament. Some work outside parliament, some work within parliament. But to ensure that we’re not just occupying those spaces like Danai suggests, are we bringing the change that we want? Talk to us about how young women navigate this terrain of resources, especially in terms of running as candidates, where we’ve heard that it’s very expensive, very costly to run as a candidate.

Civic Engagement for Youth Participation

How are young people navigating this terrain? Thank you so much, ladies, for that question. And just so to say, when we’re looking at young people in general, we’re looking at the civic engagement, which is also a very critical aspect in the development of the region as we see how young people shape the future, and then they also promote democracy and also drive social change. So going back to the question that you asked for young women, I can safely say in the region, it’s not as easy or easily accessible for young women to fully participate in the political processes or electoral processes, be it as a candidate or as an individual, because we’re looking at different aspects that come together to ensure that one is in a position to fully and actively participate.

Navigating Political Processes as Young Women

Like you noted that, especially for young people, for young women, rather, when it comes to finances and also even the know how on how do I navigate the space? Yes, I might want to be an MP or a counselor for a certain word. How do I go about it? So it also starts before we even look at do I have the financial capacity to actually participate in these processes? It also starts from, do I have the know how? How do I go about it? To ensure that I’m also part of whatever position that is being run for. How do I go about it? What information is needed? So you find that’s the first stage.

Role of Civil Society in Supporting Young Women

We find most women who aspire or would want to be part of change in the region or in the continent and different states as a whole leg behind. So that’s where we are starting from, or that’s where we’re seeing civic education coming into play, or different civil society organizations coming into play in raising awareness on what’s needed for one to run for a certain office or position or how do you go about it? And also we have also come to appreciate how we are seeing different organizations trying as much as possible to link those aspiring young women who are aspiring for different positions, be it in local governance or nationally, linking them with those already in power or those already holding those positions, so that they also get knowledge on what do you need, be it capacity building on what do you need.

Financial Challenges for Young Women Candidates

And in the event that maybe you then find yourself in that particular position, what is expected of you. So that’s one of the areas that in Zimbabwe, we can applaud. The different civil society organizations is playing a critical role in ensuring that we also lessen the number of young women who are excluded from actively participating in running for different offices. And then when it comes, then the finances, as you noted as well, it is also difficult. It is also difficult, and especially when you’re looking at young women who, coming from university or you have been part of the different university groups and you want to take it up, you don’t then have the connection or the link to know if I want to campaign, where do I get the resources as well?

Empowerment through Education and Social Support

So that’s also a challenge for young women. But so to say, I certainly do believe that once we then do away with or to ensure that the young women have the necessary or the adequate, or have access to the necessary and adequate information on, if you want to run for certain position or office, what do you need to do or how do you go about it? And in the event that you then get to be in that certain position, what is expected of you? Because before we even look at the financial constraints that women are facing, we then have the biggest challenge of them. Despite aspiring, they definitely, in most instances, don’t have the information to get to where they would want to be able to contribute meaningfully to the different spheres of the different states that economically, politically and even socially.

Summarizing the Theme of Youth Empowerment

Thank you.

Reflections on Ongoing Discussion

Thank you very much, Rutendo, for that. So in case you’re just joining us, you tune in to the sadak people summit Twitter space. And our topic today is how Saddak youth are driving positive change through civic action. And I’m thinking, as you know, as Ruthindo was speaking, I was like, the civic space itself, how do you navigate when, you know, there are all these repressive laws around? You get arrested for people are assuming there’s going to be a protest and then you get arrested, you know, what does that actually mean? Is there leg room for young people to actually, you know, drive this positive change. You know what happens to freedom of expression? You know, even the right to protest? Does it even still exist?

Engagement with the Participants

Before I go back to my speakers, I’d like to open up to the floor. If you want to be a part of this conversation, feel free to request for the mic. We’re opening up to the floor. If you have a contribution, a question to our speakers, or, you know, a question to anyone on this space, please feel free to request for the mic. And I’ll add you right up. We will begin with freelance. Thank you very much, freelance, for joining us. Please go ahead with your contribution. Hello. Fessy confirmed that you can hear this angry voice.

Interactivity in the Summit

I don’t know about ugly, but I can hear you loud and clear. Thank you. Leonard. Leonard. I’ll ask two questions, but a little bit. So I want both of you to answer this question separately. This one is yours. As a young woman, what sort of a speech are you expecting tomorrow? In the hand of. I say tomorrow from the current. From the leaders, what sort of speech do you expect to see or to hear? To the handover of the president. Nelson. Sorry, President Emerson Mnangakwa. As the new leader of the Sati. And then the young other woman.

Anticipation and Questions From the Audience

My question to you is, we expect to hear a speech from the current leader of Sadak. But we are hearing that you won’t be coming. What sort of a Sadik do you, both of you, want to see in ten years time is a younger future for our Satiq girl. For some reason, I seem not. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Freelancer, you still there? No, I’m done. I’m done. Ma. I always answer. I ask questions.

Closing Remarks from the Participants

Okay, perfect. So freelance has those two questions. And I’m going to divert them to Danai and Rutiendo. And the first question he’s asking, as young women, what sort of speech are you expecting from the head of Sadak? That’s president, Ms. Menangagwa. And he’s also saying that, you know, the, you know, president. The zambian president won’t be coming in. No, it’s a rumor. It’s a rumor. Let’s just say he’s not coming here. Thank you. I think if it’s a rumor, I don’t know whether we want to, you know, to work with rumors.

Conclusion of the Summit Discussion

Because, you know, when you’re speaking on these spaces, this information ends up being spread. So we don’t want to. Let’s not work on rumors. Let’s work on issues that we actually know so that we avoid, you know, circulating misinformation. Danai and maybe. Let’s start with Danai. Your thoughts as a young woman. What sort of speech are you expecting the head of Sadaq to deliver tomorrow? You know, at the summit? That’s a little push, ain’t it? But I think that because there’s this really big push for production through industrialization within the region, when we say we want to indigenize, when we want to produce our own things, when we be able to export, there’s a lot of that is being talked about.

Youth Education and Employment

Why do we have youths that are out of school? Because they can’t afford, but the government can be spending money on vehicles year after year and they’re not even delivered, and they don’t even feel moved to follow up on these issues. You know, you’ve got hospitals where the physician working in the hospital uses their personal resources to buy paracetamol, to buy bandages. We’ve heard some physicians actually bemoaning this issue. They end up because they’re doing this out of passion for them. It’s not about money because the salaries are not anything to write home about. I think these issues need to be dealt with how the leaders in the region trying to tackle the issue of unemployment. You cannot have a continent. You cannot have a region that is made up of young people. Young people make up, you know, more than 70%, 60%. But then they are nowhere to be found in the economy. They are struggling. They don’t have. They cannot even access basic health care. I think for me, those are the issues that I’m expecting. I hope that they will be dealt with.

Gender Equality and Empowerment

Rutiendo, your expectations. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lynette, for that. For me, as a young woman as well, I’m hoping to then hear more commitment or talk of a region that prioritizes gender equality, where there’s equal access to education, economic opportunities, as well as leadership roles. So now we have heard, or we hear a lot of talk about how the youth are problematic. So I’m hoping that there’s going to be a shift in that perspective and also have more commitment of a Saddak that actively combats gender based violence, supports the reproductive rights, and promotes policies that empower women and girls, rather, in all sectors of society to ensure that we also, as girls and young women, also then actively take part and have our voices amplified in decision making processes, as well as ensuring that we shape a more inclusive and just future in the region. Thank you.

Youth Accountability

Thank you very much. Issues of gender equality, very important issue. And also this labeling business. Why are people calling youth problematic? If a young person demands access to education, if they demand accountability and transparency, why are we labeling that as problematic? You know, issues to do with the ending gender based violence? Because it has a very. It’s costly for our economies, because the amount of care, you know, the mental health aspect, the physical aspects, and also the number of hours this victim of gender based violence, you know, is out of work, is very costly to the economy. So what is it that we can do? What commitment are these leaders going to? What are they going to commit to in the upcoming meeting? Pritchard, I don’t know. I had given you speaking rights, I hope. Okay, you are a speaker. Thank you very much for joining us. Please go ahead. And to those that are joining us, if you want to be a part of this conversation, feel free to request for the mic so that you can be a part of this conversation.

Political Accountability

Pritchard has asked for the mic again. I hope you have it now because from my end, it looks like I’ve given you the speaking invites. Are you there, Prichard? Yes. Now I can hear you. Okay, perfect. Please go ahead. Thank you for joining us. You’re welcome. So, I firstly want to respond to the question that you spoke about. The auditor general giving us the same information almost every year. So, number one, the parliament cannot do their roles because, Thomas, Ankara says the end that feeds you controls you. As long as our parliamentarians are ready to be taking stipends up to 8000 for international conferences, they cannot hold the corrupt people to account. As long as our parliamentarians are willing to be going to Kariba to analyze an auditor general report that was received in Harare, as if they cannot do it in Harare, we are not going anywhere. And as the youth, we are supposed to hold them to account.

Youth and Gender Dynamics

So as long as we are letting these old madallas do whatever they want with the funds they are getting in parliament, we are in deep trouble. Right? Also, on the issue of gender equality, I feel like in as much as the quota systems were introduced in parliament, they are doing a disservice to the women. Because the women that are in parliament right now, they are not contributing anything because they are afraid of disappointing their appointers. So they will not push anything that will that will be regarded as a way to emancipate women. They will do whatever it takes to to make their master happy. Right? So it is now the role of the youth and the civic society leaders to advocate for this change. Because equally, in Zimbabwe, it’s so unfortunate that because of the polarity, we only have two political parties and the other political parties seem to be captured.

Youth Participation

So the youth. Our role is now to hold these people to account. As I always say, the youth are supposed to be defiant. So whenever you see your mp doing something wrong, be ready to defy them being an issue or anything. Because we are not going to be getting anything positive for the youth if we are not ready to hold these old madalas to account. So they, they like the setup in Zimbabwe right now because they create the poverty in the youth. They give us breadcrumbs and it seems as if they are doing great things for us, which is wrong. And this is just a breeding place for Stockholm syndrome. We end up loving the people who are creating the problems for us and people are not giving us solutions. Just this year, these guys received at least 4000 each to go and analyze the water general reports in Kariba.

Youth Economic Disparities

But then they are the same people that are saying that we cannot fund education because we don’t have resources. They are the same people that are crying that we have sanctions when we want ambulances. So the Samsungs only work when we want service delivery, but not when they are to get their d four ds. The lack of resources only applies when the youth are demanding for accessible health, for affordable and accessible education, but not when they are taking stipends up to more than 8000 to go to other countries. Recently with one MP who was touring Europe because of his portfolio as a member of tourism and hospitality committee. And no one ever say that, no one ever talked about it because he’s one of the people in the opposition. So as long as we are afraid to hold our opposition leaders equally to account, we are not going to achieve anything.

Impacts of Political Decision-Making

Thank you very much, Pritchard, for that. I can tell from your voice, you know from the sound in your voice that you are not happy. You are a concerned youth and you are not going to take this lying down. You raise very important issues here and you are saying, but my question to you is, are you now suggesting that going forward, maybe we should take this approach where MP’s are not given allowances, they are not given fuel to come and attend parliament? And also, what else did you talk about? Yes, maybe let’s focus on that. Because when we do that, are we not just then leaving this role of law, making, this role of oversight to those that have resources alone? Maybe if you can respond to that.

Youth and Social Structures

Already it has been left to those with resources. That’s why we have a few youth in parliament. So parliament has just become a playground for those who already have money and they just want to edify their money. Of course, we can’t run away from the fact that when you are in a certain role, you have to have benefits, but then there are certain extents to which they are going with their benefits, like traveling around Europe. Okay. We had one MP traveling Europe because of environmental issues and carbon emission. Just so we know, Africa as a whole, I think it produces less than 2% of the whole carbon emission in the world. Why are we wasting our resources on such a thing when the countries that are producing the highest carbon are not doing anything?

Awareness and Resource Allocation

We can’t be wasting thousands of dollars that can be used to send children into school, money that can be used to build academic facilities. Right. Our teachers are crying that their salaries are low, but we are using that same money that we can, that can be channeled towards the teachers salaries to make someone travel lavishly. So in as much as we cannot run away from them having their benefits, it is good that we prioritize and we cut on the benefits. Right? What’s the needs of someone who has been in parliament for more than 20 years to be receiving a car each and every term office? We have people who received cars last term office.

The Need for Reform

They are the same people that received the 40,000 loan which they are not going to pay back already we know that they don’t pay back these loans. They are receiving another car this year. So parliament is just now a place where people are edifying their resources. People are just going there to add on to what they already have. People are going to amass wealth in parliament. If parliament was voluntary like it was before, pardon me for quoting the colonial era, but you had to have a certain level experience. You have to have. You have to have a certain level of money, which means that you could lead the people not to go there to start and make the money.

Contributions of Long-Standing Members

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that. And, you know, bemoans the fact that we still have legislators who continue to be in parliament over 20 years. What value do they still bring? What service are they still bringing there? And also, he highlights the issue of them receiving cars every term. And, you know, there’s a. I think before I ask you this question, you also said there’s no money when it comes to youth empowerment, but there’s money when it comes to vehicles, when it comes to allowances and issues like that. And here preacher is saying that, you know, it’s like the law making process has been just now a prison for those with resources.

Challenges to Youth Agency

And he is of the suggestion that we should stop giving MP’s cars and these allowances. Liam, thank you very much for joining us. I know you are having bad network, but go ahead and be part of the conversation. Okay? All right, thank you, Lynette, but I need to know if the greater part of my presentation was heard. Lynette. No, we lost you quite early. I need to then get back to my notes. But we lost you. I think you were talking about when people think of democracy, they’re only thinking of elections. That’s when we lost you.

Political Dynamics in Zambia

All right, thank you very much. When power cuts here in Zambia, network also know that. So anyway, I mentioned that in Zambia, peaceful transition of power is a normal phenomenon, out of it being a product of elections, right? And people assume that because of that, therefore Zambia can be termed to be a mature democracy. But the issue of civic life, inclusivity, constitutionalism, respect for human rights still remain things to question when it comes to the zambian political context and how they speak to youth participants. And like I said, democratic consolidation hasn’t been a successful venture in zambian politics.

Civic Engagement and the Role of Youth

For example, like I said, even though people have managed to hold governments accountable through the ballot, they haven’t been able to hold governments accountable through their civic participation. For example, Zambia has an obscured civic space and this is characterized by an entrenchment of a de facto police state where the government has been using the police as a means to suppress dissent as well as to deprive people of their civic liberties. For example, in the past twelve months, three or four groups of young people have tried to protest against the declining conditions of injustice in Zambia. And they’ve always been met by heavy police.

Repression and Civic Participation

Police administered repression through one being denied the right to protest, where the police abuse their power to vet and assess security measures required for protest to occur, or providing security advice. When people notify them of the intention to protest, they actually therefore use it as a platform to even deny people. Yet the public order act in Zambe does not give police the power to deprive people of their to deny people or even to give people permission to protest. Right? It’s a similar situation to what transpires here at home.

Media Presence and Civic Dynamics

I mean, they’re at home in Zimbabwe where Mapurza Anushantisquad will deny people the right to protest and they act as if they’ve the authority to permit or not permit. Then at the same time, there is the issue of democratic backsliding, especially in terms of preserving media integrity and mediaev, the role that media plays in ensuring that their checks and balances one there is the issue of propaganda and disinformation, where certain news platforms are there to give pro government narratives of the state of politics in Zambia. This has been impactful. This has impeded youth participation in terms of consuming credible and factual information.

The Role of Traditional Media

Then also there is an impending IBA act amendment bill, which seeks to concentrate power over the media on the state. And it seeks to exclude opposition leaders from accessing media through either ownership or shareholdership. So all these things are closing the civic space. And how does this then affect youth participation? It. When the civic space is closed and when a police state is entrenched, there comes issues of violence, arbitrary arrests, systemic exclusion.

Challenges Facing Young People

And these things are a form of terror themselves, which then instills fear. Then whenever there is fear among young people, they become demobilized and they become polarized at the same time. And already, like I said, zambian young people. Zambian parliament of 151 seats, only eight seats are occupied by young people in Zambia does not have a quota system, by the way, only eight seats. And this is actually marked as a 90% increase from the two seats that were occupied by young people in the previous election. And among those young people, the majority are male and the minority are female.

Youth Representation

And there is less representation of people living with disabilities, people from special interest constituencies, like the faith based and stuff is what we have in Zimbabwe. But be that as it may also, the whole binary political system also in Zambia limits space for participation of young people who do not align with either the ruling establishment, the ESW establishment, which is now the main opposition, or the other third force opposition parties that exist. So the over dependence on partisan politics, or the over dominance of partisan politics itself is demobilized young people, or is further polarized young people.

Alternative Platforms for Participation

Then there’s issues of then what are the alternative platforms that young people have been using? What are the alternative platforms? Okay, what are the alternative platforms that young people have been using to participate in civic life or to, you know, contribute towards positive change through civic actions? I say that they are social movements. And I said for the sake of those that are not familiar with what social movements are, these are self organizing groups of people with a similar identity and a similar grievance who come together to campaign for the restoration or for the addressing of their problems and through these social movements.

Impact of Social Movements

That’s how we ended up having these eight young people that are. That are now MP’s in the zambian parliament. And most of them, and most of them are like, they sit in what we call the Zambia Youth parliamentary Caucus, the ZYPC. And this was a product of a social movement called Youthful Parliament that had been working to campaign for young people to be elected into positions of power within local and national governance. So right now, youthful parliament has managed to produce over 58 young mayors across 58 local governments. And it has produced eight members of parliament, like I said. And then also there’s a permanent secretary of youth, sports, arts and culture.

Strength of Social Movements

But in as much as social movements have proven to be effective and efficient, right there over their existence in the nature and scope of being an extension of civil society, an informal extension of civil society has come with dependence on traditional civil society organizations through funding, capacity development and technical support, or sometimes rapid response in times of repression. Right. And the problem is, their interaction is unequal power dynamics being that the traditional civil side organizations with larger access to funding, they have imposed, or we, I would say I’m complicit in the issue because I also work in traditional civil side.

Inequalities in Funding

We have imposed our extractive and colonial m and e systems compliance procedures, donor demand frameworks on these young people, or these social movements, which then endionizes them, which ingenizes social movements. And when social movements are ingenized, they therefore become detached from the organic grassroots that they were born from. They then concentrate access to civil society to only young people that are educated, urbanite and elite, and with access to civil society. Those that have a frequency of attending workshops and fellowships, seminars, summer schools, winter schools. But those that are organizing organically from the grassroots are therefore excluded.

Exclusion of Grassroots Voices

And their realities are also excluded. And their expertise or indigenous experiences are also therefore ignored and whitewashed and colonial logic therefore starts to dominate more. And this is what has happened with zambian social movements. And that influence of indianization, or the tendency of indianization, affects youth participation in that it polarizes them. Because whenever we come with funding or sub granting opportunities or grant opportunities that we bring to them, they become more. They turn them into competitors, because, remember, the best project wins.

Competition and Collaboration

So the young people cease to see each other as potential collaborators, but they see potential partners, but they see themselves as competitors. And it creates an unmentioned or unwritten rivalry, which we feel because of the unequal and disproportionate allocation of opportunities amongst them. And it demobilizes the youth movement in general, and it as a whole in particular. And this also therefore creates activist monopolies where there’s a certain caliber, creed, group, class or cohort of young people that benefit from opportunities, right? Because of their exposure and unfair access to the kind of resources that we offer out of NGO organization.

Barriers to Effective Contribution

And this therefore inhibits the potential of young people to participate or to effectively contribute to transformative youth led actions that can actually change their concrete and lived realities. So that is pretty much the summary of how youth participation in civic action has been like in Zambia. And the idea, the other issue also is that there is this problem of silo operation. Young people in Zambia haven’t understood the need to internationalize their struggle or to globalize their struggle and seek horizontal solidarity from other social movements or from other youth led organizations outside Zambia or across borders.

Solidarity and Shared Struggles

For example, during the weeks where we had the finance bill protests, the Gen Z rebellions in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, we also had the fixed Zesco protest, the climate change bill protest demonstrations that were happening in Zambia in those same weeks. And I remember tweeting about the arrest of about four young people, one of them being a muslim woman. A muslim young lady called and she was forced to take off a hijab because she was being docked into a cell, which was a clear case of Islamophobia. And police saying that they don’t recognize islam as a religion in the zambian criminal justice system. Right. And right now, they are actually pursuing a court case against it.

Challenges of Mobilizing International Support

But the failure of the young people in Zambia to mobilize international solidarity amongst this great injustice of gender inequality, islamophobia, the repression of young people and obscuring of the civic space. Right. Has inhibited their, like, their potential to, you know, achieve impact. Right. And that itself creates silo operation. People are just comfortable in the glory they get for these small things that they do, which therefore becomes terrible, because we keep on being in a guinea like. We keep on becoming like guinea pigs in a big ball.

Stagnation in Activism

We keep on rolling in the same place, but moving at an accelerant speed. So that is the state of youth participation in Zambia so far. And like I said, they’ve relied mostly in participation, in participating through organizing themselves as social movements. The advantages. Excuse me. Okay. The advantages of organizing themselves as social movements is that it gives them flexible way of participating, of flexibility and participation. It sometimes helps maintain their authenticity, their organic ness, in terms of.

Authenticity in Activism

Especially when they want to pursue radical, creative, direct actions without being limited to factors of organizational policies and stuff. And everyone gets to maintain their original identity, and it keeps them involved. Social movements are fluid, which is something I think can help in pushing back at authoritarianism in a context like Zimbabwe. So there is need for young people in Zambia and young people in Zimbabwe to start having these sister solidarity, or, you know, people to people solidarity engagements in order to ensure that we get to learn from each other and exchange capacities.

Need for Cross-Context Engagement

Because one thing that lacks also in Zambia is the idea of organic intellectual thought, organic thought leadership within their civic actions. In Zimbabwe, you have people like. You have people like Chad, you have people like anangobizi, Cham, Lambo, you have people like, okay, myself, you have people like combre, Takura, Janga, you have people like, you know, tapio. People that can develop an innovative opinion or a critical opinion to explain or articulate a certain political situation in a manner that can inspire action and enough public anger for people to come and act, or that can raise consciousness and awareness from a peer to peer perspective.

Lack of Critical Thought in Zambia

That lacks. In Zambia, there’s a lot of conventional couched reliance on elite and capitalist knowledge, which sometimes militates against their good intentions to free themselves. You know, this reliance on the conventional frameworks that perpetuate under development, conventional frameworks that sometimes give them limits. So all those things, right? A lack in Zambia, which I think peer to peer engagements between young people in Zambia, young people in Zimbabwe, and even also young people in South Africa can help, especially in South Africa, of how they’ve managed to remain rooted in cultural values, aspects and memory, in promoting the activism and how they can ensure that the struggle still remains sexy.

Building a Unified Movement

Because one thing that we’ve understood is that the struggle is to remain sexy. And in Zambia, it’s becoming too formal. It’s becoming a space for the elites, which is something that I feel there is need for that intercultural and cross movement, or cross people’s cross context, exchange of ideas, or cross pollination of ideas to ensure that we build collective power. Because the problems that Zambia face of authoritarian consolidation are the same, although a different magnitude that Zimbabwe is facing. Racial inequality, social inequality, gender inequality, the same across the board, even to South Africa, even in Eswatini, where they still have an absolute monarchy.

Calls for Collective Action

So there is need for young people across the entire region to come together to build one bold collective movement, one broad and bold collective movement to agitate for democratic change and democratization, but also the liberation of people. Because there is the assumption that democratic transitions therefore necessitate liberation. But at certain point in time, you’d understand that the liberation concept is always left behind. And that’s how we fail. The democratic consolidation afford people their freedoms, to afford people their liberties, to be able to unconditionally tolerate coexistence of even minorities, because minorities continue to be oppressed in Zambia.

Ending the Cycle of Oppression

Liam, I hate to interrupt you, but please round up. Okay, sorry, sorry. Sorry about that. Let me do roundup. Yeah. So there is that issue of being able to even afford minorities their right to existence, self determination, and to start to have brutal and honest conversations without fear of being. Of losing power to young people. But at the same time, young people need to exchange capacities and engage together horizontally to build a broad and collective movement, to agitate for democratic change within our civil actions. Thank you.

Conclusion

Thank you very much, Liam, for that. Liam says that young people need to excuse exchange capacities and engage horizontally. One of the interesting issues that I picked from your Presentation was that, you know, the NGO space have been, you know, is now a monopoly. There are people who are monopolizing this. This NGO space, and it leads to exclusion and is demobilizing, you know, young people. How then do we, you know, work around this? What do we do? And because you’re also saying social movements are ngonized, I hope I said that correctly. You know, there’s that influence from.

Improving Our Conversations

We have been doing it, but how then do we, from this conversation, how do we improve? Because vivid says we need to create NeW history. How then do we improve going forward? So that by the next time we have another Sadaq people summit, you know, we’re ticking all the issues that we have discussed here, what are we improving? But before we do that, let me welcome Nika. Nika, thank you very much for joining us. Please go ahead with your submission.

The Importance of Youth in Civic Action

Thank you so much. I just joined now, and I didn’t get the other speakers that spoke earlier, but just looking at your subject of discussion here, how Sadiq youth are driving positive change through civic action. Now, it does suggest now positive change. I don’t know if you’re talking about political change or you were talking about just change in lives in general, like improving lifestyles of youth, drug and substance abuse, abstinence and all that, if, you know, it is a broad topic. Now, what I can say is Sadiq is not a uniform, you know, region in terms of the representation of youth. Now, every country has got its own story to tell. It’s got its own capacities for young people. Now, I’ll talk about Zimbabwe, which is my country where I come from.

Challenges Faced by Zimbabwean Youth

Well, young people have nothing had a voice for a very long time, which is quite sad because the change that came to Zimbabwe in 1980 was brought by young people that were prepared to go to the war and improve, in a way, the political life, the general lifestyles of people, black people in Zimbabwe, and culminating in the independence of 1980. Now, when the current government came into power in 1980, what they made sure did not happen was to empower young people in a. In a positive way because 1980. And they’ve been captured in many ways by, you know, economic meltdown and just general political clamp down by the government on young people. You know, any attempts by NGO’s to empower young people are labeled as regime change agendas and so on.

The Current Political Climate in Zimbabwe

So what you do have now are young people who are very much captured and in a way, should only thing about the current ruling party. If they are not towing the line of the current ruling party, then whatever they labeled as, you know, is labeled as. Labeled as, you know, opposition politics, of which opposition politics is viewed as something very evil and shouldn’t be done by anyone in Zimbabwe. So it becomes really difficult to sort of engage young people from Zimbabwe with any other country in this Taddik region because, you know, many other Sadiq countries are a bit more liberated. Young people are a bit more liberated.

Youth Empowerment and Political Transition in Neighboring Countries

Zambia has seen so much handover of power from one leader to the other. So young people have tasted what it means to sort of make positive change and that they know that they can champion change. If you look at the last election that was held in Zambia, which resulted in coming into power, you know, young people were so much motivated and the young vote resulted in change. So. And at the moment, you do hear of these problems that are happening in Zambia. And, of course, the kitchlema’s government would know that the power of young people can result in him being toppled. So that’s the good thing about democracy and allowing liberties for young people in a way over a long period.

Social Challenges Facing Zimbabwean Youth

So the problem we have in Zimbabwe is young people have been psyched to believe that you’ll be killed and you shouldn’t do anything. And Elizabeth is out. They’re not doing much. You can’t see young people coming up front to sort of challenge the system, come up with, even if they have brilliant ideas. Their brilliant ideas can only make sense if they are in the current government that’s actually running, which, of course, has resulted in the meltdown of the country, economic meltdown, political meltdown, and all these other things that you hear. So I can rumble on and on. This is the challenge we have in Zimbabwe.

The Struggle for Democracy in Zimbabwe

We have a military dictatorship that needs to sort of give way to democracy but hasn’t done so. So young people in Zimbabwe will be stuck. It will be very difficult to sort of network with young people in Zimbabwe. At the moment, Zambia and Zimbabwe have sort of a bit of attention in terms of the relationship between Munangagwa and Hitchilema. And as such, any attempts by young people from Zambia, for example, to network with young people in Zimbabwe will be seen as, you know, mischief by the current government because it sees any mischief, you know, anything that young people try to do as mischief.

Reclaiming the Space for Youth Voices

So I can go on and on. We can try to suggest, you know, like brilliant ideas, like the way forward here. Way forward is only possible in a normal country where normal politics is going on. And like for Zimbabwe, the way forward is still the political change that needs to happen in order to allow liberties for young people, liberties for women, and so forth. Sorry, I’ll stop for now and allow other people to talk and maybe people to ask me questions if they want me to clarify anything. Thank you.

Understanding the Youth Demographic

Thank you very much, Nika, for that. So Nika says that Sadhak countries in Sadak are not a homogeneous group. They’re different, you know, like countries. He gave an example of how Zambian youth have experienced the change of power, you know, transition of power and how Zimbabwean youths have yet to experience that. And, you know, and he also says that it’s difficult for youths in Zambia and Zimbabwe to engage because there seems to be a situation between the two. Is it, should I say the two nations or the two leaders? And any form of engagement might be seen as mischief, if I can quote him directly. But thank you very much for that.

A Diverse Perspective on Youth Engagement

And he says that, yes, we gained independence in 1980, but then the young people were not empowered. The government then that brought about this independence made sure that young people were not empowered, and young people continued to face this problem many years later. Thank you very much for that. Thank you, taxi driver, for joining us. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Lynette, it has been a minute. Where have you been hiding? But thank you for bringing this great topic, one that I will first ask. How young is young?

Defining ‘Youth’ in Today’s Context

Right? Because there are so many youngs. Right. I could say Lynette is younger than me, therefore she’s young. Lynette could look at me and say, I am older than her. She says, you’re old. And then someone who is also older than me, I could look at them and say, you are older. And they look at me and say, you are a young person. We need to define this young because there are some young people who are happy. I hear they will be flocking growth point tomorrow. Some young people celebrating the nation and may not share the same view that is being shared here by Nyika, which I think when you share such views, I think it is also important to say some young people, although not all young people, because there is a generational disconnection here.

Celebrating Youth Voices

In my view, there are some young people that I saw that were actually in video, some of them recording themselves celebrating independence of Zimbabwe and the gains that Zimbabwean fighters brought to Zimbabwe. I’m not by any stretch saying that there are no problems in Zimbabwe. I’m not saying that, but I’m just saying let’s define what is young and who is expressing these views, right. I think it is very important. I see Joanna Mamombe is a young person. She’s younger than me. She has a voice in parliament, protected by the parliamentary rules and regulations to express her views competently and freely, enjoying the protection of the parliament.

Acknowledging Young Leaders

She’s a young person. I see Sheikh Timburu and so many young of the young people in parliament expressing their views there. And even the government says, let’s have a youth quota. Which benefited was his name Ngadzawore, not Denford, but the other one. Right. Which is contrary to the view that has been expressed here by Nyka. It is the government that realizes and say, let’s actually have this quota so we can hear these voices. Right. Although it may not be adequate. I’m not saying it’s adequate, right. But there is a movement towards giving what I consider these young people, right.

Youth Representation in Governance

Because they’re younger than me. Right. That’s where the young is defined by me. From that point, they could be older than some of the people expressing their views here, to which they might say, those are old people and they’ll be right if they define that as such. But hence why I said young needs to be defined, because I see a lot of young, vibrant, some even resigned, relegating that right to represent and that voice. Relegating it. Maire, I’m speaking to, we are of almost the same age, although she’s younger than me, so she’s young. Right.

The Need for Active Participation

She relegated that elected position to say, let me leave it. I don’t want this voice. You don’t solve problems by walking away. In my view, you stand, you challenge. That’s why I champion people like Joanna Mamon, in my view, she is an environmentalist. She expresses her views around that. She has also globe tried to amplify these issues that she believes in and also harnesses the power of the younger than her and her being a young person, younger than me, expressing her views. I mean, that’s what we want to see.

Empowering Future Generations

Although we might say let’s have more of the younger than Texi or even younger than you, because the young are also being born. We want them to have a voice. So, yeah, that’s all I just have to say so that we’re not trapped in just thinking young is defined in you. It’s not only defined by you, it’s defined by me. An old person, older than you. So you become a younger person, a young person. But I am also a young person to an older person. So let’s define this young.

Addressing Youth Engagement and Representation

Thank you much for that taxi driver. Thank you very much. So the young that we are speaking to here are those between 15 years and 35. And we are looking at the young people in the Sadak region and how they have managed to drive the positive change. And yes, we spoke about the National assembly and how they are young people. Yes, we recognize that they are those quarter seats, but young people are still saying they are not enough. You know, when you look at those seats, some of the arguments that came up is how many of them are female when you are now looking at a gender perspective.

Historical Context and Economic Participation

So that’s why we’re having this conversation. We also looked at the economy, and said, you know, and one speaker that was then I said, we need to go back to history and really look at how we got to where we are now. What is our foundation in regards to the means of production? Who owns the means of production, who owned them back then? And what, you know, what is the current situation right now? How is it affecting the girl child from participating in the economic sector? How is this also, you know, a speaker from yet that’s Rutiendo also said how, you know, how is the economic situation or the means of production, how they’re distributed affecting young women’s participation in politics?

The Need for Greater Representation

We are grateful there, you know, MP’s like Joanna Mamonbe, we are grateful for MP’s like Shakespeare, but they are not enough. They don’t represent, you know, the youth bulge within the country. And then when we group it up within the region in Sadak, that’s why we’re having this conversation. I just wanted to respond to the issue where taxi driver was asking who these young people are and we are looking at this particular age group. Unfortunately, we have come to the end of our program.

Closing Reflections and Future Directions

But I’m going to ask our speakers to give us their final words. And I’ll begin with you, Danai. Where do we go from here? Okay, thank you so much, Lynette. I don’t believe that the solutions that we want are something that is achievable in the near future. Well, that’s what I suggest, because I think that to assume that you can change an entire system that spans over centuries in a couple of years is difficult. But we need to take first steps.

Long-Term Perspectives and Revolutionary Change

But my first step is not something that I believe will be popular. But I think it is important. And I want to quote a feminist from Togo. Her name is Maria Kotor. And she says the most insane, insidious consequence of colonialism is how it captured our imaginations. It’s hard to think of good governance outside of democracy or economic prosperity outside of capitalism. We have to unlearn these paradigms and reclaim different ways of being in the world. Nation states are a pathological formulation that many of us inherited in the decolonization process.

Reimagining Societal Structures

There are otherwise other ways to organize societies. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. So, for me, it’s about reimagining new ways of being. And I think the youth is an important aspect of our history. To be there, to imagine new ways of being, new ways of governments to question. That’s why, in all my contributions, I was questioning the standards that we have, like GDP. I was questioning certain status that we have in our understanding of the economy or what we constitute as bread and butter issues or the relationships that we have between countries and or the leadership structures or where the power derives.

Historical Context in the Fight for Change

We need to probe that from a historical lens to understand what monster we’re fighting so that we can reimagine new ways of being. And I don’t think it’s something that we can speak about over a Twitter space in one conversation. It’s something that is ongoing, but we have to reimagine new ways of being. Otherwise working with this very same system, we’re going to be back in another conversation saying the exact same thing maybe ten years later.

Continuation of Important Discussions

Thank you very much, Danai. Danai talks about reimagining new ways of being, and she says that one Twitter space is not going to cut it. We need to continue having this conversation. Danae, you are our next speaker for our next topic that will be looking at reimagining new ways. Thank you very much for accepting it. Okay, let’s move on to our next speaker, Ritendo.

Final Considerations on Youth Empowerment

Thank you very much. Please go ahead and give us your final input. Okay. Thank you so much for being part of this discussion. I think my parting words would be, could be that in all the speakers have, in all that the speakers have said, I think we should always bear in mind that it’s through the different forms of civic education that we are seeing the youth in the country, in the region, and in the continent taking part in that. We see how they play a crucial role in shaping a more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive future.

Engaging Youth Civic Participation

So that is for the communities and the region. So in being able to facilitate an environment, an enabling environment for youth civic engagement, we will then see a change in the different challenges that the youths of or the youths of the region are facing. And this will also ensure that when we give the youth the platform to actively participate and voice out their concerns, we also then foster their active citizenship and empower them to influence the policies that shape there today, as well as their future.

Concluding Positive Developments

Thank you. Thank you very much. Rutendo Ritendo here suggests that we need to give young people the platform to voice, you know, to voice up their needs, their wants, and this will help, you know, to foster their active citizenship. And, you know, they’re able to, you know, to participate in civilization, in civic action, to proffer solutions to the challenges that they are facing. They’re not just going to be bystanders. They’re not just going to be victims of unemployment, the beneficiaries of, you know, of high fees and issues like that, but they actually come to the table and a part of the process that is addressing the challenges that they face.

Youth Empowerment in Final Thoughts

Thank you very much. Liam, your final words. Thank you. Thank you, Lynette. For me, my final submissions are on the basis of three levels of analysis. The first thing is, what can young people do in the short term? Secondly, what should they do in the long term? Then, thirdly, what should be the ongoing process? Or how can we then proceed to defining new pathways? Right? So, like, what rotten would say that?

Challenges and Calls to Action

Twitter spaces or in fact, the revolution is not an event. So this revolution shall not be tweeted and shall not be televised, but it shall be prosecuted by people, through means that they can. So, in other words, what I’m trying to say is young people need, especially in both Zambians above, we need to go back and take the struggle back to their grassroots communities. We need to reclaim the struggle away from elites in civil society, opposition and ruling political parties, but take it back to ourselves.

Building Solidarity Among Youth

And then secondly, we need to engage horizontally, like I said, we need to engage horizontally amongst ourselves to build solidarity and collective power. Then these are things that can be done in the short term. Then in the long and medium term, we need to start doing, utilizing what we have, like social media, access to traditional or traditional, and both informal media to globalize our struggle. We need to globalize our struggle.

Global Perspective and Youth Movements

Our struggle should also become a matter of global discussion or global debate. That is how we can also mobilize global solidarity and shift power in order to pressure the current elites that govern over us to change their ways or address our demands. Then, in the last thing, we need to start reimagining new avenues of how we can fight the struggle. We cannot just look at the conventional ways of just saying no in 2008 or in 2021 in Zambia, 123 we now need to scientifically organize, consistently interrogation, get where we failed.

Creating a Movement for Change

And we need to create an idea of a movement that is not consolidated around personalities, but around collective values, beliefs and visions. Because the concentration of the struggle around personalities is that which is demobilizing young people and making it easy for the oppressors to dismember those that will be at the front and continue to perpetuate the ongoing conditions of injustice. So from now on, it’s let’s go and build solidarity. Let’s go and engage horizontally, and let’s globalize our struggle.

Concluding Remarks and Call for Action

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Let’s build solidarity. Let’s globalize our struggle. And he says that let’s reclaim the struggle and take it back to our communities. The young people need to own this struggle. It’s their struggle. So let’s take it away from, you know, from whoever had captured it and take it back to where it needs to go. Thank you very much for that, Liam.

Reflecting on Historical Foundations

And our final words will come from vivid. Go ahead, vivid. Thanks. Vivid. Your mic is off. Yes, I can. Loud and clear. Yeah, I was having a few issues with my connection. So when I start by concluding remarks with acknowledging the points that have been made by a taxi driver, but also just to really clarify that, I think the challenges of the youth manifest at different levels.

Identifying Gaps in Youth Engagement

So there is the absence of youths in political spaces. There’s also absence of youth in economic spaces. There is the absence of youths in education spaces. So I think the presence of one or two youths in parliament, it’s a positive development, but it’s not really enough. And this is also going to the point about who is a youth. I think this is an intergenerational conversation that should involve the young people, but also those who are no longer young, in trying to transition our society, in our region into the ends of this upcoming generation of young people.

Intergenerational Collaboration

So it’s really an intergenerational conversation. And some of the solutions also depend on how those who are within the leadership spaces, those are from an earlier generation accepting the role of the youth in contemporary times, but also in the future of the region. And it depends on their receptivity to the idea that youths have something to say about the region, but also about the different countries. Then I think the other thing is that I think we need to build a perspective of the region that recognizes our collective identity and our collective history in the region that we talked about earlier, and I did it, that cross cuts different boundaries, that really refuses to be containerized in NGO’s, in political parties, even in states.

Recognizing our Collective History

We need to have a vision and a consciousness that cross cuts these boundaries and understand that as a region with a collective fate and a collective history. And we can learn as well, I think, from our history in terms of civic engagement, civic actions and social movements. In southern Africa, we had one of the biggest social movement in history, which is the apathetic movement. And we need to learn from such movements what has happened in that history, what can we learn from that?

Infusing History with Contemporary Tools

And then infuse that with contemporary toolkits in terms of civic engagement and in terms of dealing with the challenges that we face today. And also, we need to be engaging with some of the most contemporary questions institutional building in Sadak. For instance, at the moment, there is a discussion around the Sadak parliament, the transformation of Sadak parliamentary into Saddak parliament. But there are already conversations about trying to limit what that parliament can do in terms of including the citizens of this region.

The Necessity of Active Engagement

I mean, we have seen in other regions, these parliaments being populated by direct vote from the people you have seen in the EU and so on. And these are some of the challenges that we have. And we need to be very contemporary and very, and work with current affairs in terms of how we also look at the Saddak region. It is a region that is transforming. There are things that are happening at the institutional level that we have to keep a pulse on.

Understanding Our History

So I would really say that those. As my closing remarks, let’s go back to history. Let’s understand our history as Sadak people of the Saddak region, let’s understand that history did not end with independence. So this idea that independence was the end of history in Saddak is not. Is not it, we need still create new history that responds to contemporary times in the Saddak region. So thank you. Thank you, Lynette, for this invitation and thank everyone.

Engaging in Future Discussions

Thank you, everyone, for the engagements and for, you know, for being part of this. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Vivid for that. So vivid is reminding us to go back to history. Let’s look at the founding principle of Sadak and maybe even critique whether, you know, that needs to change. And also look at history. You’re looking at the history, but also looking at new history.

Creating New History

History did not end with, you know, with independence. There’s new history that the youths of today are able to create. So thank you very much to vivid, but I’d like to thank each and every one of the speakers, those that asked for the mic, those that are listening, and I’d like to apologize to those that came in a bit late and requested for the mic. Unfortunately, we have to attend another Sadaq people summit meeting, a physical meeting that, you know, began 16 minutes ago.

Looking Ahead to Future Events

We’re supposed to end this at twelve, but we will be holding another Saddak people’s summit Twitter space on Friday, where we’re looking at the just transition, we’re looking at climate change. Please join us. We will send a link and a poster so that you know what we’re going to be talking about. But one of the things that I value from this conversation is the different ideas that are coming up.

Continued Conversations on Civic Engagement

And I am going to commit to ensure that we discuss each and every one, maybe weekly. I will go back to the speakers and invite all those that joined us today, for instance, tackling the issue that Danai spoke about. How do we reimagine a new way of being? You know, how do we make it better? What is it that we need to do? What are we dismantling and what are we building to ensure that it’s a conducive environment.

Inclusive Discussions on Key Issues

We’re protecting the environment. It speaks to issues of gender equality, like Rutiendo says. It also speaks to young people being able to participate. Like Liam said, we look at our history and create new history, like Vivid said. But I’d like to thank you very much.