PRESS STATEMENT OF THE YCLSA NATIONAL LEKGOTLA

Over the last three days, delegates from the 52 districts the entire National Committee members of the YCLSA met in the annual National Lekgotla to assess work done in the last year and prepare the programme for the year 2012.

The National Lekgotla followed a successful and well attended Centenary Memorial Lecture of the ANC convened by the YCLSA at the University of the Witwatersrand on Thursday, 16 February 2012 which was addressed by our National Secretary, Buti Manamela, and the Secretary General of the ANC and National Chairperson of the SACP, Cde. Gwede Mantashe.

The National Lekgotla wished Mama Kotane, wife of one of the longest serving General Secretaries of the SACP, on her 100^th Birthday. The National Lekgotla also saluted the ANC on its Centenary Celebrations.

The Lekgotla received both Political and Annual Organisational Reports. It was also addressed by the Deputy General Secretary of the SACP, Cde. Jeremy Cronin who focused on "the history of the ANC and the context in which we are celebrating its Centenary".

This year in May, the YCLSA will be celebrating 90 Fighting Years since our formation and 10 Years since our re-establishment in December 2013. There will be various activities in celebration of these historic moments.

Celebrating 100 Years of the ANC and its Shared History with the SACP

The YCL will in the next two months convene activities to celebrate the shared history by both the ANC and the SACP in the context of the ANC Centenary. The ANC as we know it would not have been there without the SACP, and inversely, the SACP may not be the 91 years old and one of the few surviving Communist Parties in the world had it not been of the contribution of the ANC.

We see the ANC Centenary as a history of a people united against early Dutch settlement, British imperialism and colonialism, land dispossession, apartheid and for political freedom. We see it also as a celebration of the resistance of our people against these colonial powers, and a remembrance of the many warriors who stood firm for centuries against the foreign colonial powers.

The history of the ANC cannot be told without telling the history of our people. Therefore, over and above celebrating the Presidents of the ANC, we will also celebrate the ordinary people who succumbed to death, exile, imprisonment and torture whose names are not in the golden plaques or have no statues erected in their honour.

This is in line with the principle that Nelson Mandela advocated for, that he "is not a liberator, but that the people are their own liberators". The ultimate liberation of young people from economic and political bondage lies in their shoulders.

This will also deal with the mentality that for all the economic and political challenges of the current conjecture, our youth must await the rise of a hero-cult to liberate them. The people we will celebrate includes the thousands of young people who faced bullets and teargas in 1976, hundreds of South Africans from all political parties who were incarcerated in Robben Island and the many soldier who are buried in unmarked graves both in the country and abroad.

From March, together with our allied youth formations, the YCLSA will launch the Monthly Youth Talk Series to reflect and engage on the significance of the Centenary of young people and the contemporary challenges facing young people. The purpose of this Youth Talk Series will be to involve young people not only in talks but also in action to ensure that there is meaningful change in our society. This Youth Talk Series will also include mobilising young people in community service that will involve care for the elderly, painting of schools, hospitals and clinics, motivational talks to school children, volunteer in extra-classes for high-school learners and many other activities to be unveiled later in the month.

On Pieter Mulder and Land Redistribution

The National Lekgotla categorically condemned the attempt by the leader of the Freedom Front Plus to try and rewrite history and suggest that the settlers and colonialists found South Africa as a "house to let". The fact is that land was dispossessed violently and through bloodshed, and ultimately legislated in 1913, leaving Africans with no choice but to subject themselves to wage exploitation in the mining industry.

Such utterances are nothing but archaic white denialism and will defeat the very process of land redistribution and land restitution. We do not believe that a person such as Pieter Mulder should serve in government, especially in his responsibility in Agriculture and Forestry. We call for his immediate resignation as he does not share the overall objectives of government or for the President to release him from his duties.

On Discipline

Much has been said about the disciplinary processes instituted against the leadership of the ANC Youth League, our ally, by their mother body. We must emphasise that the question of disciplinary processes in allied formations remain their internal process, and as the YCL, we have no interest in such.

We must also emphasise that in the movement, individuals come and go, but the movement remains, no matter how big we believe we are in comparison to the movement. That being said, we believe that the general developments within the movement, and in the youth structures in particular, poses an opportunity for us to reflect on pertinent questions that involved the deepening and consolidation of the strategic objective of building a united, democratic, non-racist, non-sexist and prosperous society.

These pertinent questions include the following:

• What should be the contribution of the PYA in building unity and cohesion amongst the youth of our country behind the historical mandate of the movement? We believe it is time that we should engage all PYA formations to rally behind a consolidated programme of national unity, nation building, democracy and prosperity. The absence of engagements and divisions within the PYA have diverged our energies into petty factional fights about who leads and when instead of advancing an agenda of youth development.
• The disciplining of leaders of the ANC Youth League will not necessarily deal with the rot that is rampant within the movement. This rot includes the sub-cultures of pursuing and campaigning for positions merely for personal enrichment and not for service to our people; or the regard of our movement as the road to individual wealth.
• Is it also not time for us to champion a credible youth development programme that will rely on the unity and collective wisdom of all young people. This should help in redeeming the overall legitimacy of the NYDA as a cash cow for political battles and for individual enrichment into a credible youth development institution. We have to shape the character of our youth politics in such a way that it stands for reason, desists from insults, refuse to be downright rude and reckless in the name of being radical and militant. We believe that it is time for the YCL to provide leadership in moving beyond cheap political rhetoric into genuine youth development issues. The movement has always frowned upon any culture of sloganeering and has always invested a lot of resources in its cadres to be able to understand its mission and defend it.
• This is also time for us to demobilise ill-discipline as a sub-political strand and the basis of organising within our structures. Being young and susceptible to change, and also advocating for the modernising of the alliance structures, does not mean we should discard the overall organisational culture and traditions of the movement. The easy resort to violence to settle political differences, the burning of T-Shirts with logos of organisations of the alliance structures and pictures of elected leaders, use of social networks such as Facebook and tweeter by general members to hurl insults to other members disagree with formal organisational decisions instead of using organisational structures; and all these other foreign tendencies require bold youth leadership in order to be brought to an end.

On the State of the Nation Address

This week Parliament and the country received the State of the Nation Address by the State President, Jacob Zuma. The major and critical announcements in this SONA was the commitment of more than R300bn for infrastructure development in order to continue with the commitment of creating more than 5 million jobs by 2030. Although this should be welcome, we should insist that it should include direct social infrastructure such as housing, schools, clinics and move beyond roads, bridges and dams.

The SONA was critical in laying the basis for expansionary public expenditure, and represented a bold step far away from the usual neo-liberal rhetoric of private sector interventions and reliance on foreign direct investments.

The overarching essence of the SONA was that the private sector has failed in creating jobs, and represented a step forward in continuing with the policy perspectives enshrined in the Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP II) and the New Growth Path. The continuation of government expenditure beyond the R1 trillion mark, as we anticipate the budget speech next week, is welcome and responds to the many demands made by both COSATU, the SACP and the YCL for a state-led development and job-creation project.

We should also welcome progress and bold statements with regards to the following pronouncements:

• The doing away with super-exploitation of workers as presented by labour brokers, in this regard, the YCLSA will be joining COSATU in their National Action on 07 March 2012 as part of our call for the complete banning of all labour brokers;
• The failure of the willing buyer willing seller model in relation to land redistribution;
• Progress with regards to the two new universities in Mpumalanga and Northern Cape;
• The building of a new city in the Waterberg region based on mining and power generation, and the massive economic opportunities presented to the local economy; and
• The various provincial infrastructure plans presented by SONA, and the extent we should take advantage in relation to our Jobs for Youth Summit Resolutions.

We reaffirm our commitment and support in the leadership of our country and executive, and will closely monitor the implementation of these pronouncements.

On the Transformation of the Judiciary

The YCLSA is extremely concerned with the use of judicial institutions to win what was lost during popular elections by the Democratic Alliance. We are of a strong view that the case brought by the DA both to oppose the appointment of Menzi Simelane and their opposition of the review of the decision to reverse the prosecution of the President of the ANC--is opportunistic and tantamount to using the judiciary for political gain.

We further support the proposed regulations for members of the judiciary to declare their business interests and benefits like all other public office bearers. We further call and will campaign for amendments in the constitution for the judiciary to be subjected to popular and democratic elections. If they serve the public, then the public must determine who should serve in such offices at all levels of the judicial system.

On the Limpopo government and the central government intervention

The YCL fully supports the intervention by the national government in rescuing the province of Limpopo from its R2.4bn deficit. We view as disingenuous for the province to suggest that the intervention was based on political reasons, rather than financial. The crises of hospital supplies, school textbooks, learner transport, salaries are so glaring that it has become impossible for the province to continue to deceive our people. The only people opposed to this decision are the tenderpreneurs who have benefitted from the province and milked it of its resources, some of them in irregular processes. In essence, we believe that there was a general failure of leadership in the provincial government.

This year, the SACP will be holding its 13^th National Congress. The YCLSA will contribute positively in the debates around policy and leadership building up to this Congress.

We will also be convening a National Education Summit whose central role will be to discuss the Green Paper on Higher Education and Skills Development.

Throughout the coming years, we will be intensifying our efforts in building our structures and our campaigns. We believe that the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality can only be achieved through a socialist state, and that we are more determined to achieve socialism.

Statement issued by YCL, February 19 2012

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