The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) is the youth wing of the African National Congress. Unfortunately, unlike the youth wings of major parties the world over, this is not the fountain from which young blood and radical new ideas flow forth to the party but rather an ill-disciplined, militant rabble whose only sense of pride seems to be in showing everyone that they cannot be dictated to.
Not for them court orders, ANC directives or anything else, they will tell the country where to get off simply because they believe they can. If you tackle them, as the SACP in Polokwane did, they will declare war on you, point out their lifestyle — as the Star‘s audit on Malema did — and will start a campaign to blackmail journalists. Heaven forbid, point out what a bunch of hypocrites they are — as BBC correspondent Jonah Fisher did — and you get called a “bastard” and a “bloody agent” as well as having white tendencies, before being thrown out of a media briefing.
The biggest irony of it all is that they believe that they are emulating the great leaders of the ANCYL from the 1940s and 1950s when nothing could be further from the truth.
Malema speaks of the current struggle for “economic freedom” as the equivalent of former President Nelson Mandela’s struggle against the forces of apartheid. This, in a country where his own party has the means to legislate whatever economic system they prefer through a substantial parliamentary majority can be compared to a time when any black person who made himself heard on matters political could find himself in prison or thrown out of a window at John Vorster Police Station.
If the ANCYL were doing their job they would be demanding to know why BEE has landed up in the hands of a few cronies instead of a broad base of black businessmen and women and why AA is done without any regard to the fact that putting unqualified black people into strategic positions where they are not qualified has ended up costing thousands of black people their jobs and most importantly, why land redistribution has been so slow. Is it because whites refuse to cooperate or because the government can’t seem to break out of their apathy and deal with the issue?
Instead we find that they are part of the tenderpreneurs, singing songs which glorify the murder of farmers — who just happen to be citizens of the country they are supposedly training to lead — and going to Zimbabwe to learn about empowerment projects from the worst butchers and economic failures in the continent’s history. Worse, return to tell the people here that land reform has been a success when aid agencies are the only reason millions of Zimbabweans are still alive. That and the fact that millions fled into exile.
Pathetic.
The truth of the irony referred to above is that the founders of the ANCYL in 1944 were men of courage and character who prized education and learning. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances that they found themselves in they were forced to adopt an aggressive approach in order to liberate all the people of South Africa from a racist regime. Their takeover of the ANC in the late 1940s was not because they believed in militancy and disrespect for the sake of it but out of necessity because they were genuinely of the view that the party’s response to apartheid was underwhelming.
These men of stature risked everything to free the black people of South Africa and unite the nation. Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, a teacher who became a lawyer, Ashley Peter Mda a teacher who began a BA degree in 1947, the year of his death, Nelson Mandela, a lawyer, Walter Sisulu, who completed his O levels in prison, and Oliver Tambo, a holder of a Bachelor of Science degree. Former president Thabo Mbeki, who became active in the youth league in 1956, undertook an economics degree as an external student with the University of London.
Yet when Mandela and Mbeki became president of the Republic of South Africa there was no doubting that they saw themselves as the leader of all the citizens and while errors were made they were certainly not in the area of nation building. As Madiba said, he has spent his life fighting black domination and white domination and it showed in both his and — I believe — Mbeki’s presidencies.
From necessity rose these great learned men from the ANCYL to fight the struggle of apartheid and then begin the rebuilding of a nation. From their ANCYL came great ideas aligned to great men who came bearing noble gifts to unite a country torn apart by insane racist laws.
Contrast this with today’s ANCYL which is made up of spokespersons that tell Sapa to fuck off, drop their pants at conferences, throw foreign journalists out of media briefings for daring to point out the obvious, refuse to listen to an ANC comprising many of the greats from the ANCYL when men had to be men, try to blackmail journalists, sing racist songs that will undo what the ANC fought for in the first place and believe that Mugabe — the worst despot in Africa — is the man to guide the way forward and being caught with their fingers in the tenderpreneur jar.
They then unashamedly compare their struggle — black economic upliftment despite the means to legislate whatever changes they want being within their own hands — to that of the golden age of ANCYL leaders who were not even allowed to leave their neighbourhoods without a pass or risk imprisonment or death. It’s only a struggle because they deem it as much when in reality the matter should be dealt with by the government assisted by people who understand financial and economic issues.
In addition, through their total lack of understanding of what the great leaders of the ANCYL stood for, they are creating a lacuna where a budding rainbow nation used to be. Because Mandela, et al, faced a struggle, suffered and came through it all, they believe they have to do the same and in the same way. Because Madiba fought a white government they’ll attack the whites. Because Madiba’s class of ’44 were hard on the leadership of the ANC, they’ll be hard on the ANC leadership and so on and so forth.
Those were totally different times when the government was based on race and black people could not move around the country, never mind control it. Yet in today’s South Africa — the complete opposite — the ANCYL, are conducting themselves in exactly the same way. Which is creating havoc in terms of nation building and has the ruling party and government on edge.
The ANCYL is not the ANC, so while President Zuma, the government and the ANC can take them to task and the police can charge them, that won’t bring about the fundamental change that is needed. That is that the men of learning, courage and character step forward and turn this once great movement around and put it on course to regain its rightful place in South African politics: the source from where young blood and radical new ideas — not militant nonsense and criminal conduct — flow forth to the party
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