An organisational report by the ANC Youth League has painted a bleak picture of the state of the organisation, with the collapse of more than 500 branches.
The report was presented to the youth league’s national conference, which took place in Mangaung in the Free State in April. The conference was addressed by various tripartite leaders including ANC president Jacob Zuma, who thanked the league for standing by him when he was almost in political oblivion two years ago. He urged the league to continue playing a critical role in the ANC.
‘You are therefore playing your rightful role when you participate actively in the processes of the ANC, including influencing the leadership composition. You also continue to guard the ANC, ensuring that we do not stray from the democratic traditions of the movement,” Zuma said.
The organisational report confirmed a Mail & Guardian exposé last year, based on an internal report that painted a grim picture of disarray with seven of the league’s provincial structures collapsing or in deep crisis.
The organisational report shows that since the last conference, in 2004, the number of youth league branches in good standing has dropped from 2 194 to 1 606. Only branches in two of the nine provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo, are in good standing.
‘There are areas of weakness wherein we have not done well as an organisation. Most prominently is our consistent failure to build the organisation in areas which are dominated by whites, coloureds and Indians. Our strategy of mobilising the youth has not yielded any positive results.
‘This continues to pose a threat to the struggle for the creation of a non-racial society. In most of the minority areas where we exist, we exist as special branches and we have failed to build fully fledged branches, which would have more than 100 members,” says the report.
Some political commentators have attributed the decline in the number of branches to leadership squabbles and internal rebellion, while others say persistent problems within the league are a result of divisions within the ANC.
In the past two years, several ANCYL leaders who were perceived to be opposed to the league’s support for Zuma were purged from the organisation. A number of provincial structures, including the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, were disbanded partly because of political in-fighting.
The organisational report raises concerns about the continued failure by ANCYL regions to convene regional conferences.
‘This is caused in many instances by the failure of regions to take branches to annual general meetings. This tendency has caused some branches and regions to function only in periods leading to provincial and national congresses. The tendency has the potential of eroding political discipline because when people begin to build branches for congresses, they tend to be selective and act in favour of branches that support the leadership preferences,” it says.