Youth league has lost its way
When an organisation has reached an advanced stage it must work towards sustaining its peak rather than regressing. Such is the state of the ANC Youth League today.
The organisation is rich in history and was once a site of progression, but it has lost its former shine and glory.
The youth league was the mirror of the future of the ANC. It worked energetically to move the mother body from narrow nationalism and the domestication of politics towards a multiracial and workingclass consciousness.
But now the league that used to be the agenda setter is relegated to the politics of being blind defenders of individuals.
It has reduced itself by defending patronage and careerism in the ANC instead of advancing the interests of young people
When one reads the history books, they say that the inception of the league began with a call for the ANC to shift its sights away from the viewpoint of South Africa in isolation from the rest of Africa to a holistic pan-Africa view — that we are of Africa, and our struggles domestically are not unique, but rather that the continent was fighting a war against colonialism, oppression and exploitation.
AP Mda and Anton Lembede were among the giants who formed the youth league’s ideological framework.
This league shook its mother body with a militant programme of action — this was when the title of “kingmaker” was first given to the league. During those times, an analytical youth league pointed out that the time was ripe to challenge the norm of passiveness in the ANC.
The youth league ensured that society played a larger role to shake the oppressive apartheid government out of its comfort zone.
It cannot be doubted that, when the youth league viewed its elders, it saw an elite group of profession- als completely oblivious to the masses and their daily struggles. Youth league leader David Bopape, a teacher and organiser of workers, put the plight of workers on to the programme of the ANC.
Connecting the dots, the youth league moved away from racial identity and linked themselves to the politics of the working class.
This tendency helped to further merge the liberation movement with the South African Communist Party. From that stage onwards, the league was moving from one milestone to the next in terms of political achievement.
This very organisation produced leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo, who are among the greatest contributors to the liberation of South Africa and, ultimately, to the democratic dispensation.
Today, listening to the youth league, it is as though these pages have been ripped out of the history of the organisation. —
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