The ANC wants its youth league turned into a lapdog

ERY few people now feel any sympathy for Julius Malema, the once-feared demagogue. The man today has no home, no friends, no followers, no hangers-on and no power.

It is hard to believe that the powerless and pathetic figure we see today is the same guy who had lines of bankers, industrialists, diplomats and powerbrokers queuing outside his office when he was just in his 20s. There is little sympathy for him because in his heyday Malema was a foul-mouthed bully who treated his foes like dirt and his friends like serfs.

But there should be sympathy for the ANC Youth League, the organisation he once led — and led astray, one might add.

This week, the ANC leadership disbanded the youth league executive and is to replace it with an interim committee that will craft a new role, vision and mandate and oversee new elections. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe was quoted as saying the decision was necessitated by the “ill-disciplined behaviour that brought the organisation into disrepute on many occasions”.

In the place of this ill-disciplined and badly behaved formation, Mantashe continued, the ANC would develop a youth league that was “not rowdy”, appealed to young people and emphasised “knowledge ”.

Very fine sentiments. Very noble intentions.

It would be hard to argue with these objectives, especially after witnessing the damage that Malema wrought on the country’s body politic, international image and investment ratings. Anyone with a

Vmidget’s understanding of South African politics and the workings of the governing party would applaud such a development. In brief: a tamer youth league is good for South Africa.

Except that this is all part of a crude move aimed at consolidating the control of the Mangaung victors — and the president in particular. Mantashe went out of his way to explain that there was no purge under way and that the ANC was merely cleaning its house. You could explain the execution of the Limpopo leadership in this way. We all know well just how deeply embedded corruption and maladministration are in that province and few would argue against premier Cassel Mathale being shown the door.

If only — if only — that was the sole reason. But more of that on another occasion.

In the case of the youth league, the clear intention is to turn it into a pliant organ. What the mandarins at Luthuli House want is an organisation that behaves like those sweet cheerleaders who call themselves the ANC Women’s League.

Remember them? They are the selfdeclared champions of women’s liberation who pronounced — in 2012, nogal — that there was no woman who was ready and capable of leading the ANC and the country. So they endorsed President Jacob Zuma instead. Don’t laugh, dear reader, it’s true.

What makes the women’s league a good model for a new-look youth league is that it obeys and follow leadership instructions unquestioningly. It did so under the previous president of the ANC and the country, even as he endangered women’s lives during the age of Aids denialism.

The youth league, on the other hand, challenged that president, whose lieutenants became hostile to it and squeezed it financially. The youth league was instrumental in toppling that president and installing the current one in his place. It was in the thick of things as the governing party set out on its ugly campaign of intimidating organs of state and eventually securing the dropping of criminal charges against Zuma.

Now it, and its leader, are dispensable. So is its militancy.

A friend recently shared the words of legendary ANC leader Anton Lembede, who, together with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, was a cofounder of the youth league and served as its first president.

As the newly formed youth league of the 1940s put pressure on the more languid mother body to take a tougher stance and more militant action against the government, older leaders took a dim view of the youngsters. The league stuck to its guns.

It is worth letting Lembede speak from the grave in this speech he gave in 1947, in which he warned about the “unfounded . . . cowardly fear of the youth league”.

“It is depressing . . . to observe that the dragon of hostility against the youth league is rearing its ugly head. Political careerists and reactionary die-hards within and outside congress view the league with suspicion.

“The league is unjustifiably accused of being a parallel organisation to congress . . . That is incorrect. It is nothing but a figment of the brain of those pseudoleaders who are only solicitous about their personal positions, pride and interest and not about the national struggle of the masses.”

It does seem that, even with Malema in the doldrums, this “cowardly fear” remains strong. And it could be the thing that kills an organisation that has been the nursery for many fine leaders and a necessary laboratory of youthful enthusiasm.