ANC YOUTH LEAGUE STATEMENT TOWARDS THE NATIONAL GENERAL COUNCIL OF THE ANC:
Tomorrow, the 10th of September 2010 marks exactly 66 years since the formation of the ANC Youth League. As part of the 66th Anniversary celebrations, the ANC Youth League will honour the ANC Youth League's founding generation by wreath laying on the grave of ANC Youth League's first Secretary General, Oliver Tambo in Ekurhuleni. After the wreath laying ceremony, the ANC Youth League will go Watville, eMandleni settlement to celebrate the 66th Anniversary with ordinary people. All these activities will begin at the O.R. Tambo Memorial in Watville from 10H00 in the morning.
The African National Congress Youth League (ANC YL) will be attending the National General Council of the ANC between the 20th and 25th of September 2010. The ANC NGC is the biggest political school of the entire National Liberation Movement and a mid-term council, whose tasks is to assess the progress and weaknesses made since the 52nd National Conference of the ANC in Polokwane. The outcomes of the NGC will be recommendations and policy directives to be officially tabled for adoption by the ANC 53rd National Conference in Mangaung in 2012, the year of the ANC's centenary. The ANC Youth League will never allow the NGC to be used for any other purpose except discussions of policy positions and exchange of useful political and ideological issues that define the kind of society we are living in and want to live in.
The NGC of the ANC Youth League which happened in August this year gave all members and activists of the ANC Youth League clear and concrete guidelines and mandate on issues that should be raised by the ANC Youth League in the ANC National General Council. Amongst the many issues the ANC Youth League will strongly raise for adoption by the ANC NGC is the role of the State in ownership and control of the country's strategic sectors of the economy, in particular mining in line with the ANC's strategic mission, the Freedom Charter. The ANC Youth League will call for the ANC to adopt a clear and unambiguous resolution on the Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals strategy on how the majority of South Africans should benefit from the minerals resources. ANC Provinces that have gone to their Provincial General Councils are in support of Nationalisation of Mines, so it will not be difficult for the ANC to resolve on it because branches of the ANC agree.
Like the NGC of the ANC Youth League did, the ANC Youth League will call for the ANC to once again re-emphasise the centrality of the Freedom Charter as the clearest expression of National Democratic Revolution objectives. None of the resolutions taken by the ANC NGC should suggest any divergence from the essence of the Freedom Charter objectives. This extends to the resolutions the NGC should take on Banks, Monopoly Industries, Land, Housing, Education, work and security, peace and friendship and all what the Freedom Charter says we should realise. The ANC Youth League is emphasising the centrality of the Freedom Charter because it remains the beacon of hope and the strategic mission of the African National Congress.
In the ANC 52nd National Conference, we said that "Our vision of economic transformation takes as its starting point, the Freedom Charter's clarion call that the people shall share in the country's wealth". The Economic Transformation perspectives expressed and reviewed in the NGC should therefore be in line with the Polokwane directive. ANC NGC should express itself on Section 25 of the country's Constitution, the Property Clause. The ANC should begin to ask itself as to whether 16 years into democracy, the Property Clause has assisted the State to decisively redistribute not only land, but the wealth of South Africa from the minority to the majority. The ANC Youth League's view is that the Property Clause should be amended and a proper legislation should be passed by Parliament to regulate how the State should expropriate private property in the interest of the people.
The ANC Youth League is aware that the National General Council is the highest decision making body in between Congresses, with powers to take any decision that will assist the organisation grow stronger. The ANC Youth League will neither support nor propose any motion that will divide the ANC or disrupts its proper functioning. Those who had thought that NGC will be a platform to change leadership are misled and will never enjoy the support of the ANC Youth League. NGC should concentrate on policy review and propose concrete proposals to the incoming Conference of the ANC in 2012.
Statement issued by the ANC Youth League, September 9 2010
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