‘I am starting to push myself into influential positions. That is the only way left. Most of the guys on the local youth league are weak intellectually and I can convince them. Based on other people’s experiences, it should enhance my prospects of getting a job in the government,” said Bonolo, a 24-year-old graduate.
Bonolo is unemployed and is desperately looking for a job. He has tried to get into learnerships, but it is only now that the African National Congress Youth League has given him hope that he can afford to smile.
Some people might see it as naked opportunism, but Bonolo —poised as he is to move into the leadership of the league — thinks he is only being practical.
He sees the relevance of the youth league only as a means to get close to the networks of power and, therefore, as the only way to get anywhere.
Although he is acquainted with a branch of the youth league — after friends encouraged him to join to help them make up numbers to constitute a quorum for the branch — Bonolo does not remember any projects ever being carried out by the league.
It is vulnerable youth, like Bonolo, that the league has failed to convince, as it continues to ask for struggle credentials 10 years into liberation.
League president Malusi Gigaba recently commented that people’s struggle credentials were checked before putting them into positions of leadership to keep out ”those posing as left-wing militants”.
It is an odd requirement given that the league insists it wants to move beyond sloganeering and the revolutionary stance epitomised by its former president, Peter Mokaba.
Still, the league has not found a comfortable middle ground between protest and engagement.
What, for example, is the league doing to assist thousands of youth who are excluded from universities because of poor academic performance? What about the even larger number of young people who are excluded because they cannot afford the prohibitive fees?
Where was the league when Wits University announced in the middle of the year that it was cutting financial assistance to needy students?
And where is the league when young people sully their credit records by engaging in business projects for which they have no expertise and which subsequently collapse, leaving them in debt?
The league claims victories such as the establishment of the National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund. But what has the commission achieved in its eight years of existence other than provide employment for youth leaders such as Mahlengi Bhengu and Jabu Mbalula?
How can the league enhance the performance of these institutions ?
Gigaba may be right in saying that the youth league cannot solve economic problems that cannot be solved by the economy itself, but it should at least hold its leaders accountable.
On August 14 Gigaba lambasted other youth structures for having their leadership appointed by their parent bodies. Among others, he was referring to the Inkatha Youth Brigade and the Democratic Alliance Youth.
But he has forgotten that the youth brigade carried out a revolution when it rattled traditional Inkatha Freedom Party leadership and brought in fresh, popular leaders. The same cannot be said of the youth league which is arguably more accommodating than its ever been in its history.
No one is asking the youth league to march to Luthuli House and take it over by force. No one is asking league members to be ”anarchists” (a complaint Gigaba often targets at the left) or to return to the militancy of the 1940s.
But as in the glory years when Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu were a force to be reckoned with, the youth league should be a catalyst for change.
It, more than any other structure, is ideally placed to push the government into focusing on the needs of young people.
But no, if they were to do that, who would be left to attack and neutralise ”the left wing”?
The youth league should be a platform where ideas can be contested within the broad liberation agenda, but, as it stands, the organisation kills debate by labelling it ultra-left.
In the same way that the ANC argues that it is a broad church committed to uniting all South Africans, the youth league should accept young radicals on board even if they consider them intellectual lepers.
The youth league has recognised that the bulk of its membership are unemployed or students and, therefore, their material conditions constitute the worst form of exclusion from decision-making and economic participation.
If they put their minds to it, the league could be the real youth vanguard and Bonolo’s reasons for joining might not be selfishly motivated, but rather because he wants to be a member of an organisation that makes a difference to the lives of young people.