Duarte tells ANCYL to get it together

THE ANC Youth League must get its act together, strengthen the level of political education of its members and elect a new leadership by the time the governing body holds its national general council, at the end of June.

This was decided after the ANC’s 11th hour intervention to prevent the league from electing new leaders at its national consultative conference held in Soweto this week.

ANC deputy general secretary, Jessie Duarte, said the party wanted to avoid a repeat of the same “style of youth league” that it disbanded last year. “We must say that red flags were going up all over the place. We were noticing (campaigning) laced with exclusion. We also felt that the style of leadership that was being projected, there needs to be more discussion… This is the future leadership of the ANC and it would be wrong to know there is a difficulty and not raise it.”

While no names were mentioned, Duarte said the ANC was told there were people “throwing money about” during campaigning for the league’s leadership.

“A number of young people said money was a problem. The availability of money deter- mined whether or not people were able to participate in the youth league.”

Worsening matters was the fact that only five of the league’s nine provinces had held provincial congresses prior to this week’s conference. This included the Eastern Cape congress, which was mired in violence and with its results now being disputed. Limpopo, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal would hold their conferences before the end of December.

Outgoing league national convener Mzwandile Masina said the conference agreed to intensify political work at branch level.