Revolutionary Greetings The ANC Youth League has entered that period of congresses which is supposed to reenergise us as activists and redirect, review and guide our actions within the struggle for youth emancipation. However, this has not been the case in the recent past for this gigantic movement of OR Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Lembede, Sisulu and many other progressive leaders that have walked the same journey we walk and contributed to the current form and content of the African National Congress.
The Youth League is the main political education centre of the ANC, because the ANC made the largest investment for the constant growth of the impetus of the struggle and the investment on the ideas for the struggle by adopting a resolution to form the ANC Youth League as a structure within the ANC. Its formation brought about the clearly defined African Nationalism that is embedded within the character of the African National Congress and it defined the mass character of the ANC and that the ANC is the organ of the people and its existence is the sole liberation of all peoples from all forms of exploitation. This is the reason why some of us feel that congresses preparations and congresses themselves have a special role to play rather than being the destructive mechanisms of hijacking the interests of all young people from being the main agenda of the youth league and creating narrow factionalist streams within our organization. The lifeblood of our movement depends on the total commitment to struggle and the understanding that all that brings us together is the total emancipation of our people, youth in particular. We must avoid reducing platforms of engagement to territorial conquests where it matters who sits as the political head more than the programme the political head must direct its implementation. Much has to be done to bring about the political education back into the Youth League. We cannot lament or shout slogans that Every Youth League member is a commissar, whereas 98% of our membership are not familiar with their orientation and have never been inducted into the Youth League. It is not surprising that we recycle and have new entrants every congress period; we cannot afford a situation where there is a revolving door symbol. One cadre reminded me that if motivations were still part of the processes of electing leaders, most ‘wanna be famous’ leaders who will end up killing our organization would not take chances with our glorious youth organization. The level of engagement will always be a problem so long as politics are not important within the Youth League, so long as the Youth League is not a campaigning Youth League its relevance will matter to the few that are constantly part and the revolving door will keep revolving for new entrants. The situation of leaders who want to usurp power for itself is the problem that is killing politics because debate is dead, politics are non-existent. Lower structures and the basic units function as administrative units of higher structures due to lack of constant campaigns. The youth are the majority of the country, education is at an all time weak stage (you might ask where is COSAS in all debates around discourse in Education), unemployment among the youth Is high, HIV/AIDS is ravaging us, FIFA is using foreign materials whilst our capital expenditure on the world cup exceeds our expectations, where Is the Youth League to debunk the myths? Nationalisation, do we have structures that can debate the matter from the top to bottom to strengthen our position or do we lack the organizing capability or capacity is at ann all time low. Why cant the Youth League lobby around issue based campaigns, are we waiting to be caught off guard and start running with heads on our feet because currently we are in a trance of thinking with our stomachs? Cde Khawe puts it nicely when he says that ‘exchange of body parts, our stomachs have become thinking organs and replaced brains’. Lets engage and look at how we can save our movement -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] .
