The Chattiest Generation has Little to Offer in Public Discourse

Cyril Skosana

@McCyrus_Skosana

We are a generation that chats a lot, but we also lack the knowledge our ancestors had. We live in a time where there is so much technology that provides us with information. Our ancestors didn’t have such luxuries. One need not leave their bed in order to access a library as some have many journals and ebooks available on the internet, the internet that moves with us.

Our elders also hold information that we desperately need, but in our belief that we know more – we tend to not want to breastfeed this information from them. If we feel we have breastfed from them, then maybe we have lost what our forefathers had passed to us.

What our ancestors had that we seem to lack is knowledge. We are a generation that lacks knowledge. We live in an era which is so advanced that it has surpassed our average intelligence. Our forefathers had perfected skills of communication –listening, decoding, encoding and giving a response– which is what we seem to lack. You’d hear of information that was shared around the fire. That information led to medicinal breakthroughs on this African continent as medicine isn’t a new invention that came from the west. 

I Stay in a South African Town Where I've Been Asked What an Internet Cafe is

Khuliso Nemarimela

@willeinstein

Recently I started working as an intern in small town of Kuruman in the Northern Cape. I am from Venda. Growing up I would eat all the fruit that people know that part of Limpopo for. On completion of my schooling I then moved to Pretoria, where I am currently in the final year of my National Diploma in Journalism at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). I never thought my journalism studies would bring me to this part of the world, where I have experienced the biggest under-development area I have ever imagined in South Africa.

Growing up in rural Venda one would expect that we don’t have modern day technologies, but we do. One can still be connected to the internet, there is a university in the area and big cities such as Polokwane and Pretoria are not too far to reach if there is something we cannot find nearby. We even have a football team in the Premier Soccer League. The Northern Cape, where I am working, has no university, Kuruman seems to be a deserted town and in my new home, the village of Maruping, I asked around for an internet café once and one young lady responded by asking me what an internet café is. I realised then that if I didn't have my mobile phone, I would be disconnected from the rest of the world. I also wasn't sure whether there was a lack of education in the area about such things or whether the young lady in question was just ignorant.