Comrades are not entitled to participate in the country’s economy according to the Mail & Guardian‘s series on the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and linked business interests published in the past year.
In this way, the notion that being young, black and successful is unacceptable (more so if you have the remotest links to the youth league) is being peddled in the media.
The ANC Youth League is an organization with more than 500 000 members across the country and suggestions that these dedicated South Africans should be marginalised from participation in the country’s economy should be rejected.
The M&G has a habit of parading the names of Songezo Mjongile, Andile Nkuhlu and Lunga Ncwana as faces of the youth league. They have been portrayed as representing the quantum of the leadership of the ANC Youth League, which lives by the M&G invented philosophy of ”One comrade, one BMW; one comrade, one tender”. Fortunately, such a youth league only exists in the imagination of the M&G journalists.
Indeed, Nkuhlu and Mjongile are members of the national executive committee of the ANC Youth League, are part of a 48-member strong collective. Mjongile further serves as the chief executive of Lembede Investments Holdings, the youth league’s investment wing. Nkuhlu is a director of Itsuseng Investments, a private company. Ncwana is managing director of Itsuseng and an ordinary member of the youth league, among more than 500 000 other members like him.
The article titled ”ANC Youth League in dodgy new deal” published in the M&G of January 28, fails to advance a convincing case that the ANC Youth League has been party to any impropriety. Lembede may be an investment arm of the youth league, but to suggest that every business deal that involves a member of the ANC Youth League is necessarily a youth league deal and therefore cannot be above board is ludicrous.
If the media suggest that there has been impropriety on the part of the Lembede board, then the board, not the youth league, must take responsibility for whatever shady deals Lembede is allegedly involved in. But is this really the case? We think not.
It is the sort of gutter journalism that is dangerous to our democracy and places our hard-won rights in jeopardy. The extremes of media freedom have never built any nation, but have served to undermine the very notion of free speech and democracy.
Is the M&G really concerned about the alleged abuse of political power by the ruling party or does it have a counter-revolutionary agenda that seeks to undermine the founding ideals of our democracy? We are convinced it is the latter.
Fikile Mbalula is the president of the African National Congress Youth League