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By Lynsey Chutel
Photographs via Gulshan Khan
Lynsey Chutel has been following a youth organization throughout the year as they search for paintings in Johannesburg. Gulshan Khan joined in September.
This is a series on how the rise of African youth is transforming the continent and beyond.
Portia Stafford, a petite and usually soft-spoken 22-year-old, shouted through the razor wire at the burly men guarding the construction site in Soweto, a sprawling township in South Africa. Pumped up with frustration and anger, she and a dozen young friends threatened to storm the site where a new settlement was being built.
They wanted, no, they demanded, jobs.
When a guard threatened to shoot, the group backed off and Ms. Stafford felt her resolve deflate. Shaken but unharmed, she made it home that day in February to the concrete-block bungalow that she shares with her parents and three young relatives.
Ms. Stafford, her sister, and her two cousins have the best school diplomas, which is traditionally the price of decent homework in South Africa. But all of them were still unemployed after years of looking for work. Their search has been complete. humiliation and surprise. Mrs. Stafford’s odyssey led her to a corporation that disappeared when she tried to cash her check, a pyramid scheme, and even, unknowingly, a brothel.
“There’s no room for progress,” Stafford said. He worries that only those who have connections will succeed, but said, “I’m still looking to get a task done and doing everything in my power. “
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