Discerning the role of faith communities in responding to urban youth marginalisation

Reginald W Nel

doi:10.4102/hts.v70i3.2743

Abstract

Urban youth marginalisation became a key consideration in scholarly and policy literature in the 1990s. This entailed a shift from an emphasis on youth in relation to activism in the struggle to overcome colonial racism – popularly known as ‘the struggle against apartheid’ – to an emphasis on youth as the object of social inquiry and social welfare programmes. Irrespective of how we valuate this shift, the question in this article is how urban faith communities and youth ministry research are to respond to the agency of youth as dialogue partners – with a focus on social cohesion. This article explores this shift in scholarship on urban youth movements, especially for the period since 1994. It draws from the perspectives of my recent doctoral studies (Nel 2013) in constructing a creative dialogue with youth movements. The ultimate aim of this article is to provide a grounded basis for constructing a methodology for a postcolonial urban theology. In addition, it aims to inform the ongoing Youth at the Margins (YOMA) comparative study on the contribution of faith-based organisations to social cohesion in South Africa and Nordic Europe, with the Riverlea community, in Johannesburg, as one of the case studies.

Highlights

In 2009, a few months before the kick-off of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, young people from Riverlea 1, a residential area to the south of Johannesburg, threatened to disrupt the soccer spectacle, even though, ironically, soccer is the favourite sport of these residents, in particular the youth
They will challenge and transgress existing boundaries while they leave old ones behind; they reimagine and embrace different spaces where there are some indications that the new or different is being understood, or at least affirmed and engaged. These hopeful assertions about the activism of younger people, as demonstrated by those from Riverlea, are echoed by leaders and activists within popular youth movements (Leffel 2007:45, 79–109; Naidoo 2009:153–168) as well as in the literature on youth research (Bray et al 2010:28–29; Klouwerberg & Butter 2011:56, 58; Naidoo 2009:153–154; Philipps 2014:2–3; Van Dijk et al 2011:2–5; Wyn & White 1997). This interest shifted in the South African context from what I would broadly call an emphasis on youth in relation to the struggle to overcome colonial racism, popularly known as ‘the struggle against apartheid’, to an emphasis on youth as the object of social inquiry and social welfare programmes, in the struggle against marginalisation
In responding to urban youth marginalisation that is often expressed as violence or tension within communities, one can see a moment of opportunity for building a creative dialogue towards social cohesion

Summary

Introduction

In 2009, a few months before the kick-off of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, young people from Riverlea 1, a residential area to the south of Johannesburg, threatened to disrupt the soccer spectacle, even though, ironically, soccer is the favourite sport of these residents, in particular the youth. While these scholars (Chisholm 1992; Hyslop 1990; Wilson & Ramphele 1989) still refer to the structural realities and as a result of that, the agency expressed in the activism of youth movements in the struggle against apartheid, they raise the possibility that these efforts were futile and that the social costs outweighed the benefits.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion