A TikTok video from a school career day showed boys dressing as Cat Matlala — a man known for appearing at police corruption inquiries, not for honest work. For Nkosinathi Moshoana, the new CEO of youth development organisation Primestars, that clip captures a dangerous truth.

"Young people today value money above almost absolutely everything," Moshoana says. "They get misled by anything that looks like it can bring them money, particularly quick money."

On June 16, South Africa marked Youth Day under the government's RESET@50 banner — 50 years since the 1976 Soweto uprising. But Moshoana thinks the country is asking the wrong questions.

"There's a bottleneck. Young people are getting degrees, certificates, and qualifications — and then there's nothing on the other side."

Moshoana knows the problem from the inside. He joined Primestars as an intern more than a decade ago, working his way through writing speeches, setting up banners, managing projects, and securing funding. In March 2026, he became chief executive.

Primestars has been around for 21 years. Its founding idea is simple: talent is evenly spread, but opportunity isn't. "If we find Nkosinathi in an under-resourced township and we find the same Nkosinathi in a well-resourced suburb with private schooling, we believe both have the same ability to achieve," Moshoana says.

The organisation has reached more than 1.8 million young people through cinema-based learning, in-school programmes, and digital platforms. Around 100,000 engage each year. Its programmes cover leadership, entrepreneurship, maths and science, career guidance, financial literacy, and gender-based violence prevention.

The recently launched What About the Boys programme, aimed at preventing gender-based violence, finished its first cycle in May with more applicants than spaces. The Future Leaders initiative gets learners to identify community problems and design solutions.

Primestars says it has invested over R10 million in bursaries for entrepreneurial skills, committed more than R5 million to incubation and support, and funded over 4,000 small business ideas from learners.

Yet Moshoana argues that youth development in South Africa has been measuring the wrong things — participation rates, attendance, and completion. The real test is whether young people actually move into economic participation.

"We're doing a lot of the learning side," he says. "But now the work is to take those same students beyond the classroom, beyond tertiary, into learnerships, into workspaces, and into entrepreneurship."

For Moshoana, economic participation is about more than money. "It gives young people the resources to address mental health, hunger, identity, and hope."

He worries that Youth Day has become too focused on symbolism. Remembering 1976 matters, he says, but the anniversary should push a harder conversation about what today's youth need to shape their own future.

"The messaging around Youth Month needs to move away quickly from commemorating the boldness of 1976 and towards giving young people agency now," he says.