The Young Communist League of South Africa has rejected suggestions that it is plotting against African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leader Julius Malema because it disagreed on who should lead the ANC from 2012.
“Any suggestion that there are some ‘yellow communists’ who are rubbishing Julius Malema is equal to shouting ‘fire’ in a packed cinema, and can only be a divisive strategy meant to discredit ANC and SACP leaders, and a weak defence on behalf of Malema,” the youth league of the South African Communist Party said on Tuesday.
“We call on those who continue to rubbish the left, privately or publicly or through official platforms of the ANC Youth League [as was done by the Gauteng provincial secretary of the ANC Youth League), to give proof of these or stop spreading this ‘Rooi Gevaar’ nonsense.”
The league supported lifestyle audits and said the SACP’s chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, also ANC secretary general, had already subjected himself to a lifestyle audit and nothing untoward was found.
It has been reported that the ANCYL prefer its former president, Fikile Mbalula, as secretary general of the ANC.
Secret dossiers
Meanwhile, the DA is to probe whether the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) is handing over secret dossiers to the ANCYL.
Malema on Tuesday morning told SAfm he had a document of a list of people that he would make public. “We just took it to the police for them to verify it. A list of people who must be targeted … and these people are called Zuma people,” he said in reference to President Jacob Zuma.
The document came from intelligence officers, he said.
“Intelligence has got a responsibility to deal with that and they found this to be very unacceptable and they thought they needed to alert us,” he said on the After Eight Debate.
‘Malema owes the South African public an explanation’
In a statement later, DA national youth spokesperson Khume Ramulifho said there were a series of fundamental and deeply problematic issues inherent in Malema’s statement.
First, if the NIA was giving its intelligence reports to the ANCYL leader, a party political position with absolutely no public duties or functions, this constituted a fundamental conflation of party and state.
“I will be asking my colleague Theo Coetzee, MP, to raise this matter with the intelligence portfolio committee, with a view to establishing the facts, whether or not NIA operatives are handing over secret dossiers to the ANCYL, if so, why, and what action is being taken against them,” Ramulifho said.
Second, if Malema was not referring to the NIA but to some sort of parallel intelligence structure within the ruling party, this too was deeply problematic.
“It is true that South Africa’s intelligence services have been systematically warped over the past few years to serve a number of political agendas, which have nothing to do with their mandate.
“Nevertheless, the very reason why intelligence services are run by the state and not political parties is because on the one hand the immense power they wield can be abused, and on the other hand they deal with highly sensitive issues, which are best handled objectively.
“One way or the other, Julius Malema owes the South African public an explanation.
“He wants the best of both worlds: on the one hand he wants to pretend he represents the people and on the other hand he deals in secrecy, is not transparent and is unaccountable,” Ramulifho said. — Sapa