In June 2015, I attend a government-funded career exhibition in Zandspruit. The event is hosted by the City of Johannesburg in partnership with a local NGO to mark Youth Day, a national holiday that commemorates the 1976 student protests against the apartheid education system. The organisers promise a line-up of speakers, including representatives from various technical colleges, universities, the Department of Labour, the youth desk at the local police station, and the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) that was set up in 2008 to address youth development issues at national, provincial, and local government level. I arrive late and find a seat in the back row of chairs set up in the school’s driveway. A woman from the NYDA stands up to speak just as I arrive. ‘Do you want to see yourself somewhere someday – to move from here to Sandton or Honeydew [upmarket suburbs in Johannesburg]?’ she asks, before admonishing young people for the next ten minutes for not prioritising their education or making use of government initiatives to help them start their own businesses.

The next speaker is a police officer who oversees the youth desk at the local police station. He is short, well built, and wears a tight-fitting black golf shirt. The youth desk is a volunteer-based structure at the police station that, at least in theory, aims to involve young people in curbing crime in the community. His pep talk too is more a rebuke than a motivation. ‘Do you want to see yourself in a squatter camp for the rest of your life?’ he asks as he climbs on to the stage. Young people are ‘killing their futures’, he says, criticising them for being more interested in obtaining Carvela shoes worth ZAR 3 000 (USD 183.22) than in furthering their education. ‘Either you suffer now and enjoy the rest of your life,’ he proclaims, ‘or you enjoy now and suffer the rest of your life’ (emphasis added). The police officer, much like the NYDA representative, affirms young people’s aspiration for upward mobility at the same time as he disparages them for being impatient and unwilling to ‘suffer’, or work hard, to improve their lives. The police officer’s criticism that young people are preoccupied with ‘enjoy[ing]’ their lives draws on a widespread stereotype that links young people’s consumer desires to a misguided prioritisation of the present at the expense of the future.