Have the ANC’s young lions turned into pussycats? Rehana Rossouw looks at the dilemmas facing the ANC Youth League
THERE was a time when the African National Congress Youth League’s leaders roared and the security establishment’s grip automatically tightened on its rifle butts. This was the 1980s — when the ANCYL was one of the most militant underground organisations in the country and its campaigns were guaranteed to strike a chord with thousands of angry young people.
This week, hundreds of “young lions” gathered again at the Durban Exhibition Centre for the ANCYL’s 19th national conference. Their roaring muted, they had come to chart a new and far less militant path for the organisation.
ANCYL deputy president Bheki Nkosi said on the eve of the conference that his members were still militant, but the organisation’s leadership had to redirect them. “They are impatient with the slow pace of change, and want militant action to speed it up. But we want them to become soldiers of democracy, to utilise their militancy to deepen democracy.
“At the same time, we want to infuse dynamism in the ANC and ensure that new and different ideas permeate the organisation. It would be folly for us to think that the bulk of our membership is satisfied with the pace of transformation. We have to ensure their message reaches the ANC.”
This task will not be easy. The ANCYL is weak, its leadership creamed off two years ago to serve in the government and civil service, its resources limited and its active membership down to about 150 000 nationally.
There are also two strains of thought in the organisation at present: one advocates that the ANCYL remain politically correct and support the ANC government wholeheartedly, and another that it support the government critically and militantly challenge it to speed up the pace of transformation.
“One group thinks the government is on the right track and the ANCYL should play a constructive role. They say we should examine what we are doing to ensure our concerns get on to the government’s agenda,” said Parks Mankahlana, one of the ANCYL executive members “creamed off” to serve on the president’s staff.
“Then other members believe if the youth league gets involved in taking decisions with the government, it will eventually end up in the same position as the National Party, because the government takes decisions in a way which accommodates everybody. There would be no space for militant and radical decisions.
“For instance, when the youth league pushed for the scrapping of the Springbok logo, the ANC was mad at us. The ANC said it was just a dumb animal and its retention would convey a message of reconciliation. It’s a small thing, but the Springbok became a break between the youth league and the ANC. Some say it was the breaking point.”
Mankahlana said a common complaint among some members of the ANCYL is that election promises could have been delivered faster if the government were not constantly concerned with allaying white fears.
But both schools of thought are supported equally in the ANCYL, he said. The conference would probably do its best to adopt an approach bridging both positions, while opening space for the league to push its positions with its parent body.
“Since the release of the ANC’s leadership and the return of its exiles, the leadership of the organisation shifted from the young lions to the old guard. The youth took a back seat. Today the national leadership of the ANC is characterised by old men whose traditions and conventions are deeply entrenched,” Mankahlana said.
“At the same time South Africa has become just another ordinary democratic society. People’s concerns have moved away from political issues and we have to build the ANCYL around those issues, changing its focus.”
Mankahlana said surveys had shown that the primary concerns of young people are education and jobs. Other concerns are social issues like crime, drug abuse and sexually transmitted diseases. The ANCYL would have to devise programmes to mobilise the youth around those issues.
Nkosi said the conference would also have to devise ways of reviving the league’s structures, reactivating branches and giving them a programme of action by which to recruit other young people. A political education campaign would have to be started soon, to train new cadres to fill the leadership vacuum in the ANCYL.
Alliances would be forged with other organisations to build a broad youth movement. With youth constituting more than half South Africa’s population, they will be a significant voting bloc in the 1999 elections and will pose a major destabilisation threat if they grow more disenchanted with the government.