Generational labels have annoyed me for years. In fact, every time I see South Africans casually sorted into “Boomers”, “Millennials” or “Gen Z”, I get the ick.
We treat these categories as if they describe people here with the same accuracy they claim elsewhere. Nah. What we’ve actually done is borrow a framework built for a different history and a different set of assumptions – and just applied it locally…without interrogation.
I guess this post is long-overdue pushback.
Generational labels: Forget birth years
Generational labels are not neutral. They’re built in specific places, around historical shocks like wars, recessions and tech booms. Most of what we see online – and use at work – comes out of the US and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe. These categories assume that everyone grew up with the same markers: post-war prosperity, the Cold War, suburbia, early internet, 9/11, the 2008 crash.
But South Africa doesn’t share that timeline. In South Africa, birth year tells you less than lived experience does.
Take two people born in 1990. On paper, they come from the same generation. In reality, it’s not even close. A White South African might remember a stable home through the transition, while a Black South African is more likely to have grown up dealing with the aftershocks of apartheid, long after 1994.
Generational labels: Consider milestones
The milestones don’t match either. If you ask a US Millennial what defines them, you’ll hear things like “I was a teen during the internet boom” or “I got my first job during the 2008 recession”. But if you ask someone of a similar age in South Africa, they’ll say:
- 1994 and what came after
- HIV/AIDS at its peak
- Expanded access to education – often with declining quality
- Load shedding becoming normal
- State capture and what it did to trust
- Chronic unemployment
So age bands are not that useful here.
Generational labels: A better lens
A better lens on ‘generational labels’ would be how South Africans actually experience time, change and opportunity – perhaps using transition points, in place of birth years:
- The Pre-Transition Cohort
People whose formative years happened under apartheid - The Transition Cohort
People who were children or teenagers around 1994 - The Born-Free Cohort
People born after 1994 (freedom, yes, but uneven delivery) - The Make-a-Plan Cohort
Younger cohorts who assume instability as the default (load shedding, unemployment, broken systems) - The Connected Cohort
A group that cuts across ages; people whose access to the internet, travel and education gives them access to global culture. These are the people most likely to ‘fit’ into Global North generational labels, because they’re consuming the same content, tools and ideas.
Bottom line: Once you start looking closely at generational labels, the cracks become obvious. So what’s the answer? Pay attention to lived experience, access, disruption and timing. Ask what people have had to navigate, not just when they were born. And, of course, if you use this framing, please credit it properly; i.e. to me.
I’m Tiffany Markman, writer, trainer and copywriter (https://tiffanymarkman.co.za).