Youths in Politics

The youth, it is said and rightly so, are leaders of tomorrow. It is for this reason that youths need to engage and actively participate in politics for them to be groomed as future leaders.
Surely it does need to call upon deep knowledge to sense the inextricable link between politics and leadership. According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English, politics refers to ‘the activities involved in getting and using power in public life, and being able to influence decisions that affect a country or a society.’
This means leadership and politics cannot be separated. In Malawi, the youth have since time immemorial participated in politics.
During the one party era, the youth were being used and abused by the MCP to sell party-membership cards to the public. Memories are still fresh how these MCP youths used to clad in red clothes and callously beat up people who did not have the MCP-membership cards.
Then the UDF-led government came in 1994. In what could be billed as a smart move to hoodwink Malawians, youths in the UDF party were given a democratic name called the ‘Young Democrats.’
According to the UDF party, the Young Democrats was a movement within the UDF party made up of youths who were assisting in the day-to-day functions of the party. To them, this movement was completely different from the MCP youth movement. They were wrong.
The young democrats were the anti-thesis of their name. They were being used to commit atrocious acts of brutality to people who had dissenting views from the UDF party.
History judges them harshly as democratic youths who beat up supporters of opposition parties, journalists, and human rights activists. Shame!
President Bingu wa Mutharika was elected under the UDF ticket in 2004. He later ditched the UDF and formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
In DPP, there are youths. These youths have been christened the ‘DPP Youth Morale.’ Their role, it seems from their name, is nothing but to provide morale to the DPP, if not the president. Pity!
Although the DPP Youth Morale can be safely described as a cut above the rest, the nation should not wallow in the jocundity that all things are rosy.
Let’s be more reasonable here; should these be roles of youths in political parties? Youths, need to practice leadership for them to become tomorrow’s productive leaders. It is of mammoth importance therefore that the youth be trained in leadership positions in various political parties.
They need to be allowed to hold administrative positions in political parties ‘politburos’
Aleke Banda, one of the smartest politicians ever to have graced Malawi, started politics while he was a teenager. Aleke, we gather, started politics in 1953 when he was just 14. Aleke had no part in any political violence nor did he pamper and pander to the whims of Kamuzu.
Aleke grew up in politics and he held several big positions in the MCP and the cabinet in his youth.
In a similar vein, youths need to be given a leadership role in political parties. They need to be allowed to contribute to the drafting of political parties’ manifestos, winning strategies and even parties’ constitutions.
For example, the country is blessed with many youths at secondary and tertiary levels who are endowed with both intelligence and wit and can contribute positively to politics in Malawi.
Of disheartening to note is that these youths have wrongly been taken as perpetrators of violence and cheerleaders of political parties’ kahunas.
Recently, Malawi conducted its fourth multiparty presidential and parliamentary polls. Sadly, not many youths have been elected to go to the august house.
Surely, this does not bode well for the future of this country. As the nation is pushing for equal participation and representation of men and women in politics, we need not neglect the positive role of the youths in politics. Neglecting the youth in politics, is like killing the future of this country.
My take therefore is that youths need to participate in leadership and administrative politics.

***The author is a Media for Development student at Chancellor College.