Shortly after the ANC Youth League became irrelevant, the mother body established a national task team to reform the institution. Its foundation was questionable, but its public mission apparently noble: to find a balance between the revolutionary youth, the vanguard who aren’t afraid to speak out, and the mother body, the ANC, which after 20 years in power is bound to come under criticism from anyone with revolutionary ideals.

The result, a testament to its failure, or success – if crippling the youth league was the aim – is Collen Maine. If it weren’t for allegations that he received a bank loan due to the influence of the Gupta family, you’d pity him. Pity should be the natural response to his leadership, but he makes it difficult. After spending a day pretending he has influence, he must sit up at night in his alleged Guptas-influenced-a-bank-that-got-me-a-house home and wonder, “Why can’t I, like Julius, talk shit and be respected? Why is it that when Juju speaks people listen?”

Maine tries to act in a revolutionary manner, but comes off as a sell-out. Worse, he looks like he’s trying so hard, like white liberals who pretend they give a damn.

In a statement on Thursday, even the ANC distanced itself from his “warmongering talk”.

“The African National Congress distances itself from comments attributed to the president of the ANC Youth League, Comrade Collen Maine, according to which he has said EFF ‘must be given war’,” said the party. “Warmongering talk is an antithesis to the type of society we envisage to build – regardless of who it comes from. Our responsibility and duty as the ANC and all Members of Parliament should be restore the dignity and decorum of Parliament; ensuring that this very important institution is able to discharge its mandate in an environment characterised by political tolerance.”

According to News24, Maine, after the eviction of the EFF in Parliament on Tuesday, said, “If they want a fight, they must be given war.”

After what looks like repeated attempts for clarification from the publication, Maine seemed to suggest ANC MPs should walk across the aisle and join parliamentary security services in affronting the Fighters

“Yes, just do that once and for all. We do that one time so we can put an end to those shenanigans,” he was quoted as saying.

Maine talks tough, but like a child who thinks his father is the strongest of the schoolyard parents, he offers nothing and knows not what his parent is prepared to actually do. In April, he said, “The national executive committee of the ANCYL has decided that we have to discuss with the state president as commander-in-chief of the country to unleash armed forces on the EFF because we can’t allow that behaviour. We are a constitutional democracy… and we do not have arms as the youth league, we are not financed by Johann Rupert and everyone else. We will rely on the state and its machinery to deal with that.” Whatever that means.

He has questioned the #FeesMustFall movement, calling for state security to investigate because of its potential foreign funding (the irony!), despite many of the student movement’s leaders being linked to the ANC and its youth league.

After criticism from Ntsiki Mazwai regarding the ANC Women’s League’s diminishing importance, he said last year, “We would like to put it to Ntsiki Mazwai that if her dirty panties are loose she must not take that it is true for the women in the ANC. Perhaps this greasy panty called Ntsiki needs to be reminded that historically ANC has been on the forefront of the struggle to liberate women.”

Perhaps the ANCYL leader, better known as “Oros” or “34.9”, had his biggest media coup this year when he rushed to the offices of the Gupta-owned The New Age and ANN7 hours after employee representatives sent out a press release calling on South African banks to reopen the company’s accounts so employees could keep their jobs. Maine, however, was met by staff who chanted “Maine must fall” and abandoned his planned meeting, criticised by the staff for parachuting in when the Guptas were in trouble but ignoring past worker struggles.

Maine isn’t an aberration but a voice of Zuma’s administration who finds himself criticised for his comments, whether they may be sanctioned by the mother body or not, for three reasons.

First, his repeated calls on state security is unconstitutional. Second, his appointment, influenced by the Premier League and highlighting the links to the Guptas, make his defences of the status quo hardly worth listening to. And, third and most important, despite his position as youth league leader, where he should be representing the voice of those demanding change rather than calling on the security services to shut them up, he offers nothing, no revolution, no policy, no mobilisation.

The national task team aiming to reform the youth league failed. Despite Malema’s failings and the same fondness for war talk, the former youth league leader led something that could have been a movement. Oros, well, is just Oros. The vanguard of ideas in the ANC is now nothing but a vanguard of defence for the party leader. DM

Photo: Collen Maine (Simphiwe Nkwali/Sunday Times)