The ANC Youth League was taking no risks on security at its national congress on Thursday. The queues to the gate of the main hall at Gallagher Estate in Midrand snaked for long distances as security personnel carefully scanned all the delegates’ accreditation cards, slowing down their entrance.
In the end the result was mixed: the congress started more than three hours late but there was order and peace inside the hall when it took off.
There was no last-minute showing of support for presidential hopeful Lebogang Maile as he stood chatting with friends in the chilly morning breeze.
But there was no mistaking the support for incumbent Julius Malema and former youth league president Fikile Mbalula. The crowd not only urged Mbalula to take over the secretary general’s reins at the ANC’s national conference in Mangaung next year, but also asked him to lead them in a struggle song, a request with which he happily complied.
The clamour for Mbalula was in stark contrast to the cold shoulder given to another former president and now President Jacob Zuma’s public enterprises minister, Malusi Gigaba. Although he sat next to Mbalula, he might as well not have been there. None of the delegates seemed to notice his presence.
Malema vs Maile
The tension between Malema and Maile, which has been a topic of much discussion lately, seemed contained as they arrived together with Zuma.
Although Maile initially seemed to be nervous on stage, he later settled in and looked comfortable while delivering a conciliatory speech in a confident manner.
In his address, Maile urged delegates not to use his name to disrupt conference proceedings — a call later echoed by his rival for the top job.
Instead it was Malema who was inexplicably incoherent as he read his political report and struggled with punctuation and pronunciation.
The young delegates were a patient lot, sitting through an uninterrupted four hours of speeches by their leaders.
National leaders who made themselves visible at the occasion included Maile’s political mentor, Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture Paul Mashatile. Also present were Dina Pule, deputy minister for performance monitoring and evaluation in the presidency, as well as Minister of Energy Dipuo Peters, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Tina Joemat-Pettersson and national executive committee member Tony Yengeni.
Delegates were in a jolly mood once the congress got under way. Although Malema raised critical issues such as land redistribution and the youth league’s view that the government should grab land without compensation, he kept the mood jolly.
He also emphasised that it was not just he who was taking a radical stance on land ownership. “This is not me, it’s [late ANC president] OR Tambo. It’s the 1948 policy,” he said.
Unless there was a drastic intervention from some quarter, it appeared the conference would turn out exactly the way Malema had planned it — on his side and that of his mentor, Mbalula.
Mbalula has just turned 40, much younger than ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe. He regularly reminds delegates at conferences that Walter Sisulu was 37 when he became secretary general of the party.
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