The ongoing development of the new post-apartheid South Africa is still dealing with its own cruel history. A socio-economic structure based on race has been built up over years of colonialization and apartheid where the black people of South Africa have been excluded from being South African citizens. The first democratic election in 1994 contributed to the “freedom in their life-time” that youth from the uprisings in Soweto urged for. But today, fourteen years after the relaxation of the apartheid the same socio-economic structures based on race are still visible, not as strict as then but still exceptionally obvious. Especially if you compare townships, like Khayelitsha in the outskirts of Cape Town, with it’s metropolitan area. Khayelitsha is predominantly black area and is also one of the poorest communities in Cape Town.

This thesis looks at one of the first generations in the ambivalence of the new post-apartheid South Africa, twelve years after the fall of apartheid. We have completed 14 qualitative interviews with adolescents in the age between 18-to-21, living in the socio-economic margin, in the township of Khayelitsha. We have examined their relations to the civil society and their participation within it. In addition also their future aspirations and how they will maintain them.