/ 14 June 2011

Sex, booze, illiteracy spell doom for SA’s youth, says Malema

Sex

Unprotected sex, alcohol abuse and illiteracy are destroying the future of the country’s youth, ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema said in Cape Town on Tuesday.

Illiteracy ensured blacks continued to be employed as gardeners, helpers, security guards and street sweepers, he told the league’s provincial council at the University of the Western Cape.

He encouraged young people to go to school.

Nationalisation of mines and banks, one of the league’s pet subjects, required skills, he said.

“Not woodwork skills — proper skills,” he laughed, a possible reference to the G he got for the subject, on the standard grade, when he scraped through matric at the age of 21.

He said the league had a responsibility to prove it was capable and that black youth should not have to continually prove themselves at the workplace or elsewhere. Education was the only way forward.

The “excessive amounts” of alcohol young people consumed also posed a threat to their future.

Acting out
Malema had the 600 people in the audience in stitches as he acted out a scene where a woman official asks for a document from an intoxicated male employee. Slurring his speech the man asks her to stand closer, and calls her “babe” and “sweetie” while gyrating his hips.

“We are drinking alcohol like there is no tomorrow. You get yourself into trouble. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t want to go to work, you are embarrassed.”

He described the third problem as “this killer disease called HIV/Aids”.

He said the stigma surrounding the use of condoms needed to fall away.

“You must never be ashamed to carry a condom. You must never be ashamed to buy a condom… keep it close to you at the scene so you can use it at the right time,” he said, demonstrating how to go about buying and then using a condom, triggering renewed peals of laughter.

He urged them to have only one partner and be faithful.

“This is a message which comes from President Zuma as well. You must be faithful. There is nothing wrong with what President Zuma is doing… with polygamy as the cultural practice … but you must be faithful,” he said.

Speaking of Zuma …
Malema had earlier decried attempts to paint the youth league as being antogonistic towards Zuma, saying the league would never allow anyone to “topple” Zuma and would always protect him.

“You don’t have to read our minds, we will tell you — we are an open book,” he told the Western Cape’s youth provincial council at the University of the Western Cape.

Malema said though the league was instrumental in Zuma becoming president of the country, he did not owe the league anything.

“We don’t want anything from Zuma. We don’t expect any reward,” he said.

“He is the president of the African National Congress and the country. He is uncontested. There is no attack (on the presidency) whatsoever from the youth league.”

If the league wanted a different president it would be vocal about it, as it was when voicing opposition to former president Thabo Mbeki’s leadership, Malema said.

His remarks came against the backdrop of speculation that the ANC Youth League had a hidden agenda to unseat Zuma. — Sapa