By Luke Tamborinyoka The census scheduled for later this year will yet again confirm that the youth as a demographic group constitute the majority of the country’s population. As we stand on the cusp of the decisive phase of our democratic struggle, this generation whose future has been squandered by the clueless and corrupt elite in government must stand up and play a more prominent role in positively shaping their lived circumstances and their future. Throughout history and across jurisdictions, it is the youth that have stood up to the mediocrity of their time and engendered truly new dispensations that infused a renewed sense of hope about the future. Across the world, young people have always been the torch-bearers in the unstinting quest for freedom, democracy, decency and dignity. It was the young people in Zimbabwe that took up arms and confronted the colonial Ian Smith regime. But times have changed. Today’s youth may have to robustly use other arsenal such as the soft power of their Twitter and blog universe to express their utmost revulsion against the deteriorating human rights and governance system in the country. In Tunisia in 2011, it was 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi who ignited the revolution that reaped a democratic dividend for an entire sub-region. On January 14 the same year, dictator Ben Ali had no choice but to flee to Saudi Arabia. It was equally these young people that led similarly popular but morally legitimate protests in Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and Oman in what became popularly known as the Arab Spring. On January 25 2011, droves of mainly young people numbering about 50 000 poured into Tahrii Square in downtown Cairo in a huge mass protest against Hosni Mubarak. It was similarly audacious young men and women who perished for a legitimate quest at Sharpeville in apartheid South Africa. It was the same revolutionary generation that tore down the Berlin Wall. It was young people that stoically stood before the armed taunt at Tiananmen Square in China in June 1989. The youth have always been a revolutionary generation; a generation that neither accepts nor tolerates killer regimes such as the illegitimate lot in Harare — a regime dripping in the blood of innocent citizens. An autocracy that has captured all institutions of the State as part of a wicked, sinister and morally reprehensible plot to decimate the legitimate opposition in the country. In Zimbabwe, the young generation of short skirts and sagging jeans must step up to the plate. The short skirts are reflective of the shortened life expectancy and the short-sightedness of their leaders, if not the abundant opportunities that have skirted the young generation. And it is not just their jeans that are sagging, but their hopes and aspirations as well! For the youth of this country, the horizon has been misted by a clueless government that couped its way into office amid a false clamour of creating jobs under the equally false mantra of “Zimbabwe is open for business”. Yet the country is shut for hope — with the only jobs created being tho