The Future of Our Histories: Young Rural Voices from Dullstroom-Emnotweni

Abstract

This article reports on three sets of interviews conducted with children and young people living in Dullstroom-Emnotweni on the Mpumalanga Highveld in eastern South Africa. Firstly, 50 learners between the ages of 10 and 14 were interviewed on their dreams for the future. Later that year, in 2011, a total of 60 young people who were still unemployed ten or more years after having finished school were interviewed on what was left of their dreams. Five years later, in 2016, a third group of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 were interviewed in order to establish whether the situation of marginalised young people in rural South Africa had changed. The primary school learners expressed their career hopes in terms of the needs of their marginalised society, that is, to become nurses, teachers and social workers. The first group of young people interviewed in 2011 blamed their shattered dreams on the unavailability of tertiary education and the reality of HIV infection. The second group, interviewed in 2016, quite similarly, expressed their concerns as a lack of job and educational opportunities, a lack of agency and choice, a lack of respect from society and decision makers, and an inability to escape from drugs and unhealthy sex.