Rein in ANCYL

SO HEATED has this season’s Game of Thrones, otherwise known as the succession race for the ANC, been that one outspoken ANC MP is fearful of visiting her own home in Durban due to threats from the ANC Youth League in KwaZulu-Natal.

Senior ANC MP Dr Makhosi Khoza has angered President Jacob Zuma’s supporters, particularly the ANCYL in KZN, over her criticism of her party and its failure to act against him. For this, she says she has received death threats.

As in 2007 and 2012, the race for ANC leadership will be highly contested, but in 2017, those who have spoken out against the rot in the government under Zuma have had to tread carefully.

Even Zuma has been affected by the seeds of this intolerance when recently, at Cosatu’s May Day rally in Bloemfontein, his presence was greeted with heckles, causing him to abandon his planned address.

Last month, at a memorial service for ANC stalwart Ahmed Kathrada in Durban, the ANCYL heckled former finance minister Pravin Gordhan, whose dismissal set off another round of protests and calls for Zuma to step down.

Days later, at a memorial service for slain SACP leader Chris Hani in Boksburg, another outspoken critic of Zuma, the party’s deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila, reportedly had a gun waved at him.

Last week, the ANCYL threatened to disrupt a book launch in Durban as Khoza was one of the speakers. Thankfully the threats came to nothing.

Twenty-three years into our democracy, most of us remember the chaos which accompanied its birth… That chaos was sowed by political intolerance on one end and a police state on the other. Whoever comes out victorious at the ANC conference in December has the responsibility not just to heal the divisions within the ruling party but to promote political tolerance at all levels.

The ANCYL needs to be told that its brand of intolerance, which is often dressed up as militancy, is unacceptable in a democracy.