Three heavyweight former leaders of the ANC Youth League have expressed dismay over the league’s chaotic five-day conference, complaining that it reflected sharply deteriorating ”cadreship” throughout the ANC.
Rapu Molekane, one of the ”young lions” of the South African Youth Congress and ANCYL secretary between 1991 and 1994, said he felt ”shocked” and ”betrayed” by the Bloemfontein conference, where delegates drank copious quantities of alchohol, threw bottles at one another, disrupted speeches and carried a mock coffin of one of the leadership candidates on to the conference floor.
Now South Africa’s ambassador to Ghana, Molekane said he believed the answer might lie in a year’s national service for school-leavers, along Ghanaian lines.
The Bloemfontein conference adjourned without passing a single substantive resolution on issues relating to South Africa’s youth, after seven of the league’s provinces rejected the election of league president Julius Malema and five others as ”not free and fair”.
Luthuli House will investigate the elections before convening a special elective conference or a national general council.
Echoing Molekane’s disenchantment were Mpumalanga premier Thabang Makwetla, a member of the league’s national executive committee from its relaunch in South Africa in 1991 until 1994, and Thabo Masebe, a three-time NEC member elected national treasurer in 1994.
”This is a reflection of the problems of the ANC more generally over the past few years, resulting from an exclusive focus on the ANC leadership issue,” Masebe said. ”They were magnified because young people were involved.”
The league postponed its conference last year, saying it wanted to focus on the coming ANC congress in Polokwane. The disorder at the conference, particularly over which delegates had voting rights, is seen as flowing from inadequate preparation.
The booing of speakers at Polokwane, and particularly the rough treatment meted out to former ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota, is also seen as setting the pattern for the conduct of youth league conference delegates.
All three former leaders lamented the decay of the ethic of service in the ANCYL and its replacement by the pursuit of business and political self-advancement.
Of concern too was the involvement of personalities from outside the league in lobbying for leadership candidates and, allegedly, bankrolling their campaigns.
This is widely seen as reflecting the league’s enhanced status, in the wake of the Polokwane conference, as a ”kingmaker” and vehicle for securing influence in the ruling party.
The conference swarmed with senior ANC leaders, mainly from Jacob Zuma’s camp, including such Zuma-supporting NEC members as national MPs Siphiwe Nyanda and Nathi Mthetwa, former spy boss Billy Masetlha, Mkhonto weSizwe veterans leader Ayanda Dlodlo, and ANC provincial secretaries Mcebisi Skwatsha and Cassel Mathale.
Exiting league president Fikile Mbalula was seen driving in a C Class Mercedes-Benz, accompanied by controversial businessperson Fana Hlongwane and Lunga Ncwana, a would-be entrepreneur linked to Lembede Investments, the ANCYL’s investment arm and recipient of murdered mining magnate Brett Kebble’s largesse.
Makwetla confirmed hearing allegations that candidates had spent millions of rands on campaigns for the presidency, describing this as ”a most dangerous practice”.
The Zuma-backed Malema is said to have spent close to R10-million on a campagn involving runners armed with cellphones to all parts of the country, while his rival, Saki Mofokeng, is also alleged to have spent millions promoting himself.
At the conference supporters of both candidates sported campaign T-shirts and large, professionally produced posters reading ”100% Julius Malema” and ”100% Saki Mofokeng”.
Makwetla said leadership positions in the youth league had traditionally been contested, but that this had taken place through ”critical appreciation of the candidates by league comrades in league structures”.
”Otherwise there is a risk of lies and unfounded claims. You cannot decide on leadership unless the branches agree unanimously after debating the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses,” he said. ”Otherwise you risk destroying the institution.”
Molekane said that in the youth league of the 1990s ”American-style” campaigning for the top positions was unheard of. ”It means that only people with money can become leaders,” he said.
Makwetla said he imagined everyÂone in the ANC was ”concerned, disappointed and embarrassed” by the Bloemfontein conference, which had been ”the very opposite” of the organisation’s founding principles in 1944 and of its post-war ”young Turks”, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Anton Lembede.
Referring particularly to the expulsion of league deputy president Reuben Mohlaloga in 2005, he said the league ”had not jealously guarded the culture of debate and tolerance for a variety of opinions and views”.
Mohlaloga was ousted for arguing that there was no risk of two centres of power in the ANC, against the dominant view that Thabo Mbeki’s continued leadership of the organisation posed such a danger.
As Mohlaloga’s position had now been officially endorsed by the ANC, the league could have contributed to a climate of reconciliation by inviting him back into its ranks, Makwetla said.
It was a major concern that ”forces who sit outside the league are taking a direct interest in, and desperately trying to manipulate, the outcome of leadership elections”, he said.
The former leaders remarked on the steady decline in the membership of the ANCYL — from 500Â 000 at its last conference in 2004 to 300Â 000, according to Makwetla — and the quality of its activism.
This had been evident for some years and was highlighted both in the secretary general’s report to the ANC’s 2002 Stellenbosch conference and by former ANC president Thabo Mbeki at Polokwane.
”People’s understanding of why they have joined, of the ANC’s objectives, is miles away from what the organisation is about,” Makwetla said. ”They think it’s there to address their own material interests.”
Molekane said there appeared to be no political education in the league. During Mbalula’s presentation of his political report last Thursday large numbers of delegates were absent from the conference hall.