The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) is due to hold an elective conference between April and May, and candidates are already staking their claim to lead the organisation, which has lost significant support to Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). 

The league was disbanded by the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) in 2018 when it failed to elect a successor to Collen Maine. Since then, the league’s affairs have been handled by task teams. Now an elective conference must be held before June 2023, when the current task team’s term of office ends.

Fikile Mbalula, ANC secretary-general and former ANCYL president, met Youth League fundraisers recently to discuss the logistics around the holding of the conference. 

Sizophila Mkhize, controversial ANCYL National Task Team member and spokesperson, is a leading candidate for the top post.

On supporting Zweli

While no relation to Zweli Mkhize, Sizophila Mkhize is among leading figures who went out of their way to support the former health minister’s bid to unseat President Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC leader during the party’s 2022 elective conference, held at Nasrec.

She campaigned for Mkhize in the youth structures, at rallies and on social networks. Eventually, however, Mkhize lost to Ramaphosa.

“I supported change… I supported a new face, which was my democratic right to do. I unapologetically supported Zweli. But, unfortunately, we were defeated. In fact, we were clobbered big time.

“I have now moved on. We don’t have time to mourn about losing at Nasrec. Nasrec is over and done with, and I have to move on to support the new leadership that was elected at Nasrec and we must all embrace that leadership,” she said.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “KZN ANC licks wounds during reconvened conference in Mangaung after Nasrec defeat”

She said that most of the league’s leaders and members with whom she had interacted had accepted the Nasrec results and were now getting ready to elect the new ANCYL leadership that could shape the politics of South Africa in the next few years.

Youth League disarray

The league has been in a state of disarray for many years, with interim structures running the organisation. KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape are yet to hold provincial elective conferences.

These provinces are planning to hold conferences ahead of the national conference. In December 2022, an attempt to hold a provincial conference in KZN was aborted when the event descended into chaos with delegates throwing chairs at each other. It was postponed indefinitely.

Even if these provinces do not hold their own conferences, the national ANCYL conference can go ahead, according to insiders.

Mkhize believes that the ANCYL has been muted in the past decade so that it will not rattle cages inside the party. 

She said “elders” in the ANC “deliberately put the ANCYL to where it is now”. She said the unintended consequences of this have been to reduce the relevance of the league in society and to empower the rival EFF in the space of championing the causes of young people. 

Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations

“I think the ANC Youth League was deliberately brought to its current state not yesterday, but a long time ago, when abo Sindiso Magaqa were suspended.”

Magaqa was ANCYL secretary-general until its leadership was disbanded in 2012 when it was found guilty of bringing the ANC into disrepute. He was suspended, while Malema and Floyd Shivambu, former ANCYL deputy president who is now deputy president of the EFF, were expelled from the party. Magaqa died in 2017 after he was shot in Umzimkhulu, where he was an ANC councillor fighting corruption in the council.

“I believe that that is where our problem – as the ANCYL – started, when the voice of the Youth League got silenced. The ANCYL of Peter Mokaba, although we were not there, was able to espouse radical policies, espouse radical vision for young people of the time. They were asked [by the then ANC leadership] to tone down … but at no point were Peter Mokaba and other leaders censured.”

Hardships faced by SA youth

She said ANC leaders should be taught about the traditions of the ANCYL, including its autonomy and independence, and about the hardships and difficulties faced by the youth in South Africa so they can respond speedily.

She accused some leaders of the ANC of benefiting from the current state of the ANCYL. “Some of the leaders of the ANC must stop choosing and funding factions of the ANCYL to fight each other,” Mkhize said.

She said if she became ANCYL leader, the organisation’s focus would be to try to assuage the anger of young people, leading a struggle “to find jobs and economic opportunities for young people, [and] end load shedding as soon as possible”.

“The people who are affected most by load shedding are young people who are still finding themselves in jobs, in establishing their small businesses. A young person who is selling vetkoek finds himself/herself without electricity for four hours. How is that person going to fry these vetkoeks?

“When government fails to provide job opportunities to young people, some start their businesses but these businesses are affected by the failure of the government,” she said, adding that the government should be made to respond faster to the challenges facing society, especially the youth.

Youth flocking to the EFF

“When you censure the voice of young people, you stunt and disempower them, making them lose hope in changing their lives. That is why you are correct in saying that young people are flocking to the EFF where most of the leaders are former ANCYL members and the issues and policies they speak about are the same things we spoke about during the ANCYL conference in 2011, policies like economic freedom in our lifetime and the seven cardinal pillars that were discussed thoroughly during that conference of how we are going to emancipate young people.

“Today, these cardinal pillars are looked upon as if they are the brainchild of the EFF when, in fact, they are not. They are policies of the ANCYL, but young people in the ANC are afraid to be seen to be radical.”

Mkhize said if she was elected she would take the fight to the EFF’s doorstep and reclaim the space to fight the causes of young people. 

“With the support of young people, we will have to contest the space. The ANC has always been at the forefront of the struggle for young people. We will espouse policies and programmes that will bring young people closer to the ANC.”

The youth vote in 2024

Mkhize said that although she was aware that young people were angry with the ANC, she believed the party could still persuade them to cast their votes in its favour in 2024.

“We acknowledge that many people have lost faith in the ANC. What we can really do is to go to young people and tell them that some bad things happened in the past, but there is no other organisation or party that can represent them better than the ANC. 

“We have got to put pressure on the ANC. The ANC has got to change the gear and fulfil the promises it makes, especially to young people. There is nothing more frustrating than going on campaign, on a door-to-door campaign, and convincing young people to vote for the ANC as it will do one, two and three, and for the ANC to do the exact opposite once elected.

“We will put pressure to deliver. Most of the service delivery happens at local government level, so in ANC-led municipalities people shouldn’t be complaining about lack of services; people shouldn’t be talking about not having water, complaining about potholes and other things. There are municipalities that are happy that they are merely getting clean audits when they are failing to service residents,” she said.

On choosing coalition partners

Despite some polls predicting that support for the ANC during the next elections could drop to less than 50% or even 40% and that it could lose some provinces to the opposition, compelling the ANC to form coalitions, Mkhize said she believed the party could still defy the odds and win in 2024.

“I don’t think it will be that bad. I strongly believe that the ANC can and will still win, especially if it is able to convince its supporters to go out in their numbers to vote. But, God forbid, if that doesn’t happen and we have to form coalitions, we have to be circumspect and choose carefully.”

One school of thought within the ANC has it that the party should consider forming a stable coalition with the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) against the radical and unpredictable EFF. Others believe the red berets are spiritually closer to the ANC than the DA.

Mkhize said: “DA has never been friends of ours, they are rightwingers. The ANC is leaning towards the left. It will have to team up with the forces of the Left and go for the EFF over the DA. In my view, the DA is the National Party of our day. If you give power to the DA, you are giving back power to apartheid. So, for me, whatever choice it is, it can never be the DA.” DM