Statement of the African National Congress Youth League on Nationalisation and the resolution of the ANC National Policy Conference
The African National Congress Youth League has, over the past couple of days, watched with bemused interest as a variety of ANC leaders and representatives of white monopoly capital have gone to varying degrees of pain to dilute the ANC National Policy Conference resolution on nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy. Their comments have ranged from the wistful to the incoherent and some are as recent as the utterances attributed to Mr Cutifani, CEO of Anglo-Gold Ashanti, in today's Business Day newspaper (see report).
We are not surprised that Mr Cutifani and his ilk would wish to downplay and deliberately misrepresent the views of the Policy Conference. This is because indeed the decision to nationalise mines will never be accepted by those who continue to reap huge profits on the back of the continued suffering of the black majority who wait with increasing impatience for the realisation of the Freedom Charter demand that the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.
We have also noted the need on the part of ANC leaders to bend over backwards to appease capital in fear of an imperialistic backlash against the radical and progressive decisions taken by branches of the African National Congress at the National Policy Conference. Leaders of the ANC must never be afraid to represent the views of the majority of branches of the ANC. The decisions taken are owned by all of us and represent the continuing frustration of the people with the still untransformed and untransforming state of the South African economy.
It is perhaps necessary though to reiterate the poignant truth and the unambiguous resolution of the National Policy Conference on nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy and it reads as follows: