This Youth Month, Gasant Abarder reflects in his latest #SliceofGasant column on the fact that it is never too late to make positive changes – even if you wasted your youth when you were young. It is a lesson he learnt from his good friend, South African music icon Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
Congregants had to stand outside in the parking lot of the mosque on Youth Day for Friday’s Jumuah lunchtime prayers. I had to double check I wasn’t late. Unusually, I’d later learn, that folks had been waiting well before noon at Islamia Mosque in Lansdowne.
The mosque is massive and can hold thousands of worshippers. I found out soon enough, standing in the icy wind outside but thankfully with a break in the rain, that people had come from all over Cape Town to hear Mufti Ismail Menk speak.
The religious leader is really good on Twitter – making the teachings of Islam relevant for his thousands of followers. But I was a bit underwhelmed by his sermon, to be completely honest. There was an opportunity to inspire hundreds of youngsters on Youth Day. But the mufti preached the old fire and brimstone – like Santa making a list of naughty or nice.
It was a shame because he had a captive young audience who had come for enlightenment. And he was a much deeper thinker than the cobbled-together lecture he delivered.
But it got me thinking: Is youth wasted on the young? Or do young people just not get the kind of guidance they need?
Indulge me for using the ANC Youth League definition of youth for a minute. Their rules: You’re a youth until the ripe age of 35! This definition helps me broach the topic with my dear friend, South African music icon Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, on Thursday.
Sipho will be speaking to me in front of an audience at the annual Music Exchange 2023 at GrandWest. Music Exchange attracts local and global entertainment industry thought leaders, who build partnerships and create jobs in the music business. Our topic: ‘In Conversation With My 25-year-old Self.’
Given the chance, there’d be plenty to tell my 25-year-old self. Twenty years ago (certainly, by that ANC Youth League definition), circa 2003, I wasn’t exactly wasting my youth. I had already purchased a property, my career was off to a good start and I was a husband and dad.
But there would have been plenty of things I would have done differently, including:
- Not dropping out of varsity once I got a permanent newspaper job, thinking I had made it
- Having a budget and saving at least 15 percent of my salary
- Forgetting about buying stupid cars (like a seriously used Land Rover and a French convertible import with no real book value)
- Investing in property and not having a credit card
- Putting effort into my faith
- Quitting smoking there and then instead of 20 years later
We don’t live with regrets because there are many things that worked out swimmingly. At 31, and still a youth leaguer, I was the youngest ever editor of the Cape Argus in the paper’s almost two centuries-long history.
But in 2017, I had to grow up because I was hitting a ceiling. The year before, I met Sipho for a profile interview for a series I was writing for the newspaper. He told me how he had completed matric when he was 60.
It moved me to complete my journalism degree. I think my maturity saw me graduate cum laude. It was my ticket out of a toxic mainstream media environment.
Sipho didn’t stop being a student of life and continued his studies. Now in his 70s, his conversation with his 25-year-old self will be profound. The high school dropout, who would eventually inspire me further to pursue my master’s degree, would have been 25 the year before I was born.
He used his music as activism to fight the heinous apartheid regime. At 25, it was just a year after hundreds of youths were killed in the 1976 student uprisings. He left these shores to pursue his music career and would perform to a massive global audience, using music as his weapon as a freedom fighter.
In 1984 – when South Africa was burning and a decade away from being free – he would release one of our most famous anthems in Burnout.
More than four decades later, Sipho’s 25-year-old spirit has never burnt out. Come hear him inspire at Music Exchange on Thursday and find out if he would have done things differently, knowing what he knows now about the music business and life.
For more information and to book your seat, visit Quicket.
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Picture: Supplied