Several political reasons why I and my branch will vote for Julius Malema!
Perhaps I, from the onset, should mention that I am a voting delegate and that neither I and nor our branch personally know President Julius Malema.
Equally, we have never been influenced by anyone outside our branch about our programmatic and leadership perspectives in relation to the upcoming 24th ANC Youth League National Congress. We are also not necessarily interested in President Julius Malema knowing any of us (at least that's my view).
We are however interested in his leadership qualities which fit like a plug in the socket in terms of the current youth challenges and what's to be done. Put differently, President "Killerman" Malema is equal to the task of confronting the apparent strategic resistance towards addressing youth issues and treating us (youth) as recyclable condoms that are only relevant during national, municipal and internal party election periods particularly because of our fresh energy, physical and otherwise skills to mobilize as foot soldiers (or Economic Freedom Fighters).
Hence, in this paper I will present the political basis for our principled and solid state of readiness to proverbially "shoot to kill" in its defense of Julius Malema and the ANC YL. In other words, this article seeks to briefly share with all of you several political reasons that informs our decision to support Julius Malema for the second terms as we also supported him for the first term. To this end, I will highlight some of the current youth and organizational challenges and then proceed to argue how President Malema's leadership qualities fit in all of this.
Without further class analysis because of time and space but it suffices to say that South Africa, just like all hitherto existing societies, is a product of contestation over the control of political processes and the means of production. As a result of strategic compromises by popular forces as led by the glorious African National Congress, 1994 officially saw the defeat of, at least in principle, an entirely white and racist regime whose mandate was to ensure that black people remain, as Isaac ka-Pixley Seme noted, "drawers of water and hewers of wood" or ‘zombified/unthinking' white servants.
17 years after the hard-won 1994 democratic dispensation, the rich minority (usually white males) appears to have consolidated their wealth which was "accumulated through dispossession", as David Harvey noted.
Put simply, the fact of the matter in the post-apartheid South Africa is that class, race and gender continue to determine one's geographical location and the quality of services that are received. For instance, in South Africa, 1 in 10 Africans are half-starved, 1 in four African children are undersized. Approximately less than 45% of the total South African population lives on less than US$2 a day.
Furthermore, consistent with the SA Stats Mid-Year 2010 Population Estimates cited in the 24th ANCYL Discussion Document on Youth Development for Economic Freedom, "Of the approximately 49,9 million people in South Africa...approximately 33 million (71%) are below the age of 35, with some 18 million of these between the ages of 14 and 35". The National Treasury document on Confronting Youth Unemployment argued that the unemployed youth are normally less skilled and inexperienced with nearly 80% having no formal further or tertiary education, whilst two thirds never worked thus putting a strain on the social security system.
It is common knowledge that unemployment remains prevalent in the post 1994 with almost 24% of the South African workforce unemployed. The youth form the majority of the unemployed with almost less than 70% of them loitering around the streets because of unemployment. The post-1994 situation vindicated Francis Fanon discovery that "you are rich because you are white (and vice versa)...you are poor because you are black (and vice versa)."
Thabo Mbeki's adaption of the famous ‘two nations' theory is correct in that poverty is a defining characteristic of South Africa and it has a clear racial, gender and class dimensions. Hence, throughout different definitions used to quantify poverty, there is one common conclusion: "the majority of black South Africans exist below any acceptable minimum poverty line" (Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa, 2002).
Ha-Joon Chang, the author of "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" identifies the post 1994 South Africa as a "cappuccino society" by virtue of the fact that there is a group of poor black people at the bottom, a small layer of white froth above it and a sprinkling of cocoa (black elite) at the helm. To be fair, the ANC led government has managed to score some victories although much more still needs to be done.
To illustrate, above 2.2 million houses have been built for the poor thus giving shelter to almost 10 million plus people, 6 million households have gained access to clean water since 1994 and about 5-million homes have been electrified. Majority of public schools have free tuition and school feeding schemes. A National Student Aids Financial Scheme has assisted a lot of us (i.e. the previously disadvantaged) young people even though the majority of graduates remain unemployment. How then do Julius Malema's leadership qualities fit in all of these?
Julius Malema understands the causal factors of all youth challenges. He understands that the main issue is not all those clownish explanations by some government officials and our own senior leaders. He understands that our National Democratic Revolution is not an end in itself but a means to an end. And this end is the society free of exploitation of one man by another consistent with the Freedom Charter and contrary to the one where the government executive is relegated to managing the interests of big business, as Marx and Engels warned.
Julius Malema knows that there is a dialectical connection between the broader socio-economic challenges and youth challenges. He understands that the struggle to translate political power into economic freedom in our lifetime that requires militant leadership similar to the one of the 1944 Mandela, Tambo, Nokwe and Lembede etc generation. Put simply, the socio-economic challenges facing the rural and urban youth are as a result of the failure of the free-market economics orthodox that reduces the state's role to a referrer hence now is the time to imagine a new economic model that will usher us into the ideals of the Freedom Charter.
He knows that now is the time, particularly as we match the African National Congress Century celebrations, to account to the majority of young people who are unemployed. Now is the time to answers as to why almost 17 years down the line, our senior leaders still talk about political freedom, reducing our revolution to service delivery, and a right to this and that at the expense of a real issue i.e. economic freedom and land ownership.
Julius Malema is conscious that we demand to know why the NYDA is going around municipalities with concepts and letters requesting certain resources from the municipalities that cannot even generate enough money from their tax base. He knows the youth demands to know why are our leaders scared of the legacy of AMABHUNU whose legacy ensures that white farmers continue to hold on to the vast hectares of productive stolen land.
Julius Malema can confront, without fear or favor, the continued relegation of youth agenda to a charity case by some within and outside our glorious movement. He can speak truth to power and utter sentiments that most of us can only share in corridors and whisper about them without any courage to publicly raise them. In summary, I and my branch support Julius Malema because:
- Since he took office the ANC YL has grown from 400 000 to 600 000 members.
- He has made the ANC YL to be (in)famous depending on whether you understand the issues as articulated or not. For instance, almost all young people do know about the ANC YL whether they agree with us or not but they know we exist.
- He has strengthened the ANC through defending its leaders even when it was unpopular to do so.
- He has sustained the legacy of the YL of being the preparatory school where raw diamonds are polished and also being a ‘factory' for fresh thinking in the ANC.
- He is not infallible but what is key is that he can pick himself up and move forward just like a soldier who stumbles and fall in the battle field but never gives up fighting.
- He does not only criticize for the sake of it but also constructively proposes a way forward.
- He can swallow his pride and remain discipline even when those that we supported when it was unfashionable to do so ridicule him and turned against him just because they cannot control or patronize him.
- He knows that the YL is not an association of academic intellectuals but a preparatory school of young people whose inspiration is comes from the militant Mandela, Tambo and Lembede etc generation of 1944.
- He is committed to a translation of political power into economic freedom in our lifetime.
- Finally he is ready to defend the autonomy of the ANC YL which is apparently misunderstood by most senior leaders of the ANC (but we forgive them since most of them have never been active YL members except to read about it in newspapers).
On the basis of the above, I reaffirm that President Julius Malema's leadership qualities are relevant to our current challenges particularly because most of us have succumbed to the power of patronage by some senior leaders at the expense of the youth that is beginning to be impatient as most of them are at the fore front of the so-called service delivery protests.
Finally, I am for a struggle to translate political freedom into economic freedom in our lifetime hence I support Julius Malema as an advocate for this struggle. Therefore anything else will just be a perpetuation of the legacy of colonial apartheid with popularism and patronage being used to give us false hope as Fanon's Pitfalls of National Consciousness once argued.
Thembinkosi "Guerrilla" Zondi is Moses Mabhida's Kz221 ward 3 ANC branch Secretary writing in his personal capacity a voting delegate to the 24th National Congress of the ANC YL.
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