Youth Power! in Soweto

By Yaw Perbi

Youth Power! is a revolutionary paradigm introduced in 2004 by Dr. Yaw Perbi that seeks to start a fire in Young People for them to get their act together and do something significant with their lives... Now! Since then, there has been a preoccupation with looking for evidence of Youth Power! all over the world and in all spheres of human endeavour all over the world. Here's a scintillating Youth Power! story from Soweto, South Africa.

A lot has positively changed in the world over the last 100 years through Youth Power! This small book is a record of Youth Power! in Soweto in the last century to spur on young leadership in the 21st century. The issues that still plague humanity today - from neocolonialism through systemic racism to police brutality - are conquerable through same Youth Power! that dealt a fatal blow to monstrous apartheid yestercentury.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yaw Perbi
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9789988817671

Yaw Perbi

Dr. Yaw Perbi is a medical doctor and CEO of a number of global leadership development enterprises with impact in over 60 countries on all continents. Born and bred Ghanaian, he's physically served in 45 countries including as a military captain with the United Nations Operation in Cote d'Ivoire and has been the toast of media groups worldwide including CNN, the National Press Club (Washington DC), VOA, CBC and BBC. Dr. Yaw Perbi is a John Maxwell certified executive coach, bestselling author of 15 books, keynote speaker and corporate trainer.  He is a Fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network, a Lausanne Movement global catalyst and serves on various strategic boards. He is a serial entrepreneur in multiple industries, ranging from real statement to education. Yaw and his economist-entrepreneur wife, with their seven biological children, make their home between Accra, Ghana and Montreal, Canada.

Book preview

DEDICATION

To my seven biological children: that you may live fully and not be judged by the colour of your skin.

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO 2020 EDITION

PRELUDE | THE STORY BEHIND THIS STORY

SIGHTS & SOUNDS OF SOWETO

BEFORE JUNE 16

ON JUNE 16

AFTER JUNE 16

POSTSCRIPT | THE EVIDENCE

PREFACE TO 2020 EDITION

It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.

Steve Biko

The Definition of Black Consciousness, I Write What I Like, 1978

It is 2020. The pandemic year. The epochal events of this year, on both sides of the Atlantic, have had such significant parallels with the youth uprisings and protests in apartheid South Africa in 1976 that after procrastinating the republishing of this book for years I finally got the umph to do it. Police brutality. Systematic racism. Peaceful protests turned violent. We are dealing here not with a spontaneous outburst but with a deliberate attempt to bring about polarisation between whites and blacks. This government will not be intimidated and instructions have been given to maintain law and order at all costs. Do any of these phrases and sentences sound familiar? Yet these are not from 2020; these are all 1976 words and phrases!

With the world slowed down, even locked down, we all had the time and bandwidth to take in the slow slaughter of an American young man, George Floyd, by those paid to serve and protect him.

The aftermath of #BlackLivesMatter protests in the United States and around the world seemed like a coordinated tsunami. Perhaps no other year has there been more concerted protests against police brutality, systematic racism and no-nonsense towards anything or anyone glorifying an apartheid, segregationist, slavery or colonial past. At a point, the confluence of the 400-year anniversary of the first slave setting foot in America, a plague (COVID-19) and protests by the oppressed made me wonder if this was not a modern replay of the biblical Exodus, the liberation of Israel from Egypt.

Then just when things seemed to be settling down, #endSARS happened. Nigerian youth wouldn't take the brutalization of their kith and kin anymore either. The well-organized air war (via social media) and on-the-ground protests did result in the dissolution of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) that had been unleashing untold mayhem on