I was recently insulted by some young lads in a WhatsApp group and my crime was daring to disagree with what has now become a wholesale obsession among sections of young people with blue lights and the trappings of power without so much as a footnote to a coherent political programme.

Now, I could have responded. I could have descended into the mud, ready to prove a point to strangers whose thumbs move faster than their thoughts. But I decided to ignore the young lads. Not out of weakness, but out of principle. Because, truth be told, not every person who can afford a smartphone and data is intellectually deserving of a serious conversation.

Well, at least age has taught us that access to social media is no qualification for decent and sound political discourse. Having 2GB of data does not automatically upgrade one into a revolutionary thinker. Some of our people enjoy typing things longer than their understanding of basic issues. You will find a young man, sitting comfortably in his mother’s house, typing “we deserve cabinet positions” while his biggest leadership responsibility is deciding what to watch on DSTV after supper.

And yet, beneath the noise and the insults, we must acknowledge that calls by the African National Congress Youth League for representation in Cabinet are not, in themselves, misplaced. In fact, they are correct.

Young people are the majority in this country. They are the ones who will live the longest with the consequences of the decisions we take today. When our government fails, it is the youth who inherit that failure in the form of unemployment, inequality, substance abuse and hopelessness. When the government succeeds, it is the youth who must carry that success forward. So, when they demand representation, they are not asking for a favour; they actually are asserting a democratic truth.

But here is where the real problem begins, proper representation cannot be reduced to a birth certificate. You are not progressive simply because you are young, nor are you reactionary simply because you are old.

This binary thinking is both foolish and deeply reactionary. It is the kind of thinking that believes wearing skinny jeans automatically qualifies one to run a department and that knowing the latest amapiano track somehow translates into an understanding of macroeconomic policy. Life does not work like that.

History teaches us something far more serious. When the youth of 1944, led by Anton Lembede, Ashby Peter Mda and Nelson Mandela, confronted the leadership of the African National Congress, they did so because they had a solid political programme. They were dissatisfied with polite appeals to a violent apartheid regime, and they proposed mass action, defiance and a more militant political direction.

Their youth was not their argument; their ideas were.

In the democratic reality, when Julius Malema was re-elected in 2011, the rallying cry of “economic freedom in our lifetime” gave young people something to organise around. You may question the messengers, you may question their real intentions, but you cannot deny that there was at least a political programme anchoring that moment.

Today, what do we have?

A generation that wants blue lights for their own sake.

We have young people who find the sound of a siren more attractive than the content of a policy document. Young people who think governance is a photoshoot; you arrive, adjust the suit, take pictures and leave the hard thinking to someone else.

Quite honestly, a VIP convoy does not solve unemployment and fix service delivery. And blue lights, no matter how bright, cannot illuminate an empty mind.

This is not an argument against youth representation. On the contrary, it is an argument for a better, more serious form of it. We need well-crafted young people in government. Young people who have read, who have thought, who have engaged with the complexities of our society. Young people who can enter Cabinet not as passengers, but as drivers of a clear and transformative agenda.

The fact of leading a structure, on its own, does not qualify anyone to lead society. Leadership is not candyfloss; it is rather a burden of ideas and responsibility.

The youth must demand space, but they must also prepare themselves to fill that space with substance. Otherwise, we will produce a generation of leaders who are very good at switching on blue lights, but completely incapable of switching on the economy. And that, comrades, would be the real tragedy.

Let us do better, we can do better.

*Tshediso Mangope is an ANC member in Mangaung and writes in his personal capacity…

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of this publication (Journal News).