Youth gather for imbizo
By Tabisa Mntengwana
30 June 2010
AS part of efforts to empower youngsters, Buffalo City officials visited the Kidd’s Beach area during one of the municipality’s Youth Month activities.
More than a hundred youngsters were at the Youth Imbizo, held at the Kidd’s Beach Community Hall. They participated in debate and discussions, under the theme “Fully empowered and united youth towards a healthy society”.
Youth Month is held every June to commemorate the young students who died in the unrest and riots of 1976. One 16 June of that year, a peaceful student march against Bantu Education was met with guns by the apartheid security forces. The country went up in flames as a result, and the human rights violations of apartheid were put squarely on the international agenda.
Welcoming guests to the Kidd’s Beach function on Friday, 25 June, Xolile Ngcamama, a ward councillor, said: “We are grateful to have youngsters who are committed to making a change in our communities, for them to be involved in various activities including health, environment and community building projects.”
The youth of Kidd’s Beach are involved in various projects aimed at helping the sick, the elderly, and youngsters with health issues and other problems.
Talking about the objectives of the imbizo, another ward councillor, Bathini Booi, said: “The importance of this day is that the city is doing everything in its power to reach out to the youth and cater to their needs … We are trying to build strong relations between the youth and the municipality to make it easy to introduce youth development projects.”
The Independent Electoral Commission and the provincial department of labour also took part in the meeting.
Speaking to the assembled youth, the acting executive mayor, Sithembiso Tyilo, said: “The focus today is on youth development and I want to emphasize that we are here to listen to the youth in order to understand the challenges that you face every day.”
The municipality was keen to help young people who participated in projects and programmes presented to them in an effort to develop them and to maximise its effectiveness in communities.
Tyilo wrapped up the day, saying: “As the municipality we will by all means try to involve other government sections in our initiative to help youngsters’ development in the Buffalo City region.”
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