South Africa

South Africa

Dear Minister: Youth League aims to put pressure on government write away

Dear Minister: Youth League aims to put pressure on government write away

The ANC Youth League’s voice has been diminished since the expulsion of Julius Malema and the disbanding of its structures. Its current leaders say it’s time to start talking about policy again and they’ve started with writing letters to ANC ministers. By GREG NICOLSON.

“Dear Minister Nkwinti, I wish to extend revolutionary regards to you,” begins ANCYL Secretary-General Njabulo Nzuzo. He goes on to congratulate the minister of rural development and land reform for pushing the Land Expropriation Bill, but notes a few problems. Land has been redistributed without effective empowerment programmes to assist new landowners and the cost of land bought by the state is often inflated.

Nkwinti should get the Constitutional Court to interpret whether the law allows for expropriation of land without compensation. Politely, Nzuzo finishes by saying the Youth League will keep pressuring the minister until they see change.

Nzuzo’s letter to Gugile Nkwinti was the first in a series of weekly letters the ANCYL plans to send to ministers, pushing them to implement resolutions taken at ANC conferences. Publicly calling out their own leaders, they said, was aimed at pushing the party’s radical policies and taking the broader political conversation back to policy issues.

“We have set ourselves the task of generating critical discourse both inside the movement and in public discourse around strategic policy matters that must inform the thinking and actions of the ANC into the future,” said a statement from Mlondi Mkhize, Youth League national spokesman. The aim is to speed up radical interventions in transforming society.

Under its most recent leadership, the league has been described as blindly defending President Jacob Zuma and those associated with him, along with the ANC Women’s League and Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association, as part of the Premier League – the ANC faction that includes leaders from Mpumalanga, Free State, North West and KwaZulu-Natal.

Mkhize, however, described the letters as an effort to position the league as the driving force behind “the re-engineering of the ANC as an effective strategic political centre at the driving seat of the National Democratic Revolution”.

He suggested that the Young Lions should return to its role, which has been written in history and was envisaged by the national task team that led the ANCYL while its structures were disbanded, as a force to raise and push radical issues in the ANC.

“Some have elected to misinterpret our action through the opportunistic lenses of an imaginary factional battle that we are supposedly mounting against selected members of our government. We reject this nonsensical proposition for the shallowness that informs it,” Mkhize said.

On Tuesday Nzuzo said the league would write a minister a letter each week, with both critique and praise where necessary.

Seeing as the ANCYL is part of the ANC and has access to ministers, why should they write open letters? They said they’ll continue to raise issues internally and that there is no contradiction in calling for the party to close ranks while publicly commenting on policy.

“We must separate the ANC from the STATE. The ANC as an organisation has internal processes on how to raise issues as a member, this is clearly indicated in the constitution,” Nzuzo said in an e-mail.

“But the STATE even though led by the ANC is an institution on its own and the Youth League as a voice of young people must engage these organs of the state, especially on issues already in public discourse. The aim is to put pressure to implement with speed decisions that have already been taken at ANC level and which should be implemented.”

Pressure is the key word and the ANCYL said it won’t stop with letters.

“We will use other creative means to ensure that pressure is put to government to deliver to the needs of young people,” said Nzuzo.

Asked whether taking public positions on ministers was in response to the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters, he said, “We do not care about the EFF. They will collapse on their own. The Youth League is the only alive and strong youth organisation in the country. Most have lost their voice; some only operate as a defence system. The Youth Leaguers are called Young Lions; we must not shut up but we must fight for young people and the open letters are just a start.”

The ANCYL has recently been vocal, but more so on defending the ANC and its leadership than raising issues of radical transformation and policies that favour the youth. It appears to have lost both support and its ability for mass mobilisation. It will need both to improve its image and set the agenda on policy issues within society and the ANC.

The Youth League leadership is, however, accused of being concerned only with the protection of President Jacob Zuma and the Premier League, which makes it difficult to believe its claim of being the “only alive and strong youth organisation in the country”.

On Tuesday, the ANCYL issued another statement saying the Nkandla issue should be put to rest after Zuma paid his obligations. It rallied against the big banks but heaped praise on VBS Mutual Bank, which loaned Zuma the R7.8-million.

“As the ANCLY [sic], we will be mobilising young professionals in their millions and South Africans in general to open accounts with VBS Mutual Bank. We are convinced that this is a unique banking facility tailor-made to transform our economy,” said Mkhize. DM

Photo: ANC supporters celebrate during victory celebrations at Nasrec in Johannesburg, April 24, 2009. South Africa’s ruling African National Congress claimed victory on Friday in a general election that will make party leader Jacob Zuma president. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

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