STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS YOUTH LEAGUE
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
The Young Communist League of South Africa in the province of Gauteng notes the statement issued by the national leadership of the African National Youth League, yesterday, Monday 17 October 2011, with serious concern (see Business Day report). We have come to accept, that the national leadership of the Youth, under Mr Julius Malema as president, has adopted an anti-Communist Party stance, insults against the Party leadership and zigzagging for content. The statement by the national leadership of the Youth League seeks to isolate our Party General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande and undermine the Communist Party.
We particularly note that the trend of an anti-Communist Party stance, insults against the Party leadership and zigzagging by the African National Congress Youth League national leadership surfaced just after the 2009 national and provincial government elections, when Mr Julius Malema unfoundedly accused the Party of seeking to hijack the African National Congress for socialism.
Shortly after the last Central Committee of the Congress of South African Trade Unions this year, the national leadership of the Youth League under Mr Julius Malema, who is presently undergoing a disciplinary hearing for allegations of misconduct, issued a statement insulting our Party General Secretary and further championing the undermining of the Party. We did not want to respond to immaturity and we don't want to toe the same line and start exchanging insults.
Our first message to the leadership of the Youth League is very brief today.
We call on the national leadership of the Youth League to take up a struggle against their own weaknesses, rectify their style of work and take up the challenge of the theoretical struggle very seriously. In South Africa, the capitalist class constitutes the ruling class. Therefore the overwhelming majority of our population, the working class, is subjected to the class rule of an unelected minority and therefore has no real political freedom over and above the bill of rights ("civil liberties") with access to most of the rights determined by money. To suggest that an overwhelming majority of our people have attained political freedom and the only thing that remains is economic freedom is not only syndicalism, but reflects lack of work in taking up the theoretical struggle.
If the national leadership of the Youth League under Mr Julius Malema takes up the theoretical struggle seriously, and brings it on a par with both the political struggle, which remains relevant to overthrow the capitalist ruling class, and the economic struggle, the comrades will appreciate the political content of the economic struggle and the economic content of the political struggles and connect the two with scientific, revolutionary theory.
The national leadership of the Youth League in that way come to realise that there can never be true political freedom without economic freedom and vice versa. In particular, the national leadership of the Youth League will realise that economic freedom without an end to exploitation of a person and class by another, without socialism, is just utopian thinking.
Just a reminder about some truth to the national leadership of the Youth League: it is not the Communist Party that has been calling for discussions on African National Congress leadership election in its next year's national conference; it is not the Communist Party that, when the African National Congress called off that debate, allowed for songs in its meetings promoting someone for election in the next African National Congress' conference that is one year and some months away. To the contrary, it is the Youth League. It is self-contradicting by the national leadership of the Youth League to do these things and say that they are being done by the SACP
Our second message to the national leadership of the Youth League is even shorter. The perspectives on the surfacing in our country and movement, of tenderpreneurs, demagogues and populists, are not the perspectives of our General Secretary as an individual person; they are the perspectives of the Party as a collective.
Lastly, we the YCLSA shall defend the Communist Party and its leadership from all sorts of attacks. Insults are not our road to take. Content is our direction.
Statement issued by the YCL Gauteng, October 18 2011
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