[DEBATE] : YCL message on 62nd anniversary of ANCYL

[Dominic Tweedie]

YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA



PRESS STATEMENT, 09 September 2006


YCL Message on the Occasion of the 62nd Anniversary of the African National
Congress Youth League


The YCLSA wishes to congratulate and salute the ANC YL on its 62nd
anniversary on September 10, 2006. The ANC YL remains a beacon of hope to
the working and the poor youth of our country in their struggle for a better
life. The YL has played an immense contribution in the liberation struggle
of our people in general and the Africans in particular from the yoke of
national oppression as manifested by Capitalism and its pitfalls, and the
building of a non racial, non sexist and democratic South Africa. The YL’s
rich history of struggle is an epitaph that is engraved in the hearts of our
young people and continues to be an inspiration in deepening and
consolidating the National Democratic Revolution.

As the YCL we are proud to have an ally like the ANC YL, whose struggle
credentials speaks volumes and continue defending the advances we
accumulated in 1994. For us this occasion we need to use it to celebrate and
reflect on our advances and looking at the concrete challenges that faces
the youth of our country particularly the working class and the poor youth.
What is more disturbing is that 12 years into our democracy the youth of our
country is still grappling with the challenges of poverty, unemployment;
HIV/AIDS; Drug abuse and inadequate education as presented by the Capitalist
South Africa that we live in. Crass materialism amongst the youth has loom
large at the expense of the society we envisaged to build; that is humane
and caring, and if we fail to grapple with these realities our country will
be turned or reduced into a dog eats dog society or “The Lotto society”.

Celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the ANC YL must also be about defending
the ANC and the mass democratic movement as a whole as Capital is
intensifying itself in turning the movement into its capital bargaining
chamber as can be seen through the strategic compromise of the ANC Deputy
President using the organs of class rule; and the outsourcing of key
decisions by the movement to the Golf courses, Native Club and Working
Groups etc. The ANC YL must be in the forefront of leading young people in
defending the movement against these threats. This action requires maximum
unity amongst the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) forces and other
platforms of young people outside the progressive youth movement.

The most immediate challenge that the YL needs to partake and take a lead in
is the re – opening of the investigation of the death of Comrade Chris Hani,
who was brutally assassinated 13 years ago, and whose blood fast tracked the
process of change in our country and admired by millions of South Africans
particularly the youth. We cannot allow his death to be clouded with
conspiracies and theories and we need to find the whole truth of who acted
along Januz Waluz and Clive Derby – Lewis in the assassination of Comrade
Chris. The YCL together with the ANC YL must take a lead in demanding the
State and other relevant state institutions to re-investigate the matter,
and we need to use the advances we accumulated 12 years ago to write our
history because if we fail to do so our history will be littered with
distortions and conspiracies. We cannot allow the name of Cde Chris to be
discarded in our history because he sacrificed all his life for the
liberation of human kind. We cannot allow blank pages in our history.

The YCL in its Strategy and Policy Conference last year in Limpopo adopted
the 10 Youth Demands to be achieved by the year 2015 as encapsulated in our
Defiance Campaign which is reminiscent of the 1944 generation of the ANC YL
that radicalized the ANC and the broader movement.

The ANC YL, by virtue of being a youth movement of the ruling party, the
ANC, has a responsibility of influencing and leading this campaign in
improving the lives of young people in our country. We have adopted this
programme of action also because we strongly believe that it continuously
mobalises young people and challenges the capitalist nature of the economy
that we inherited from the Apartheid regime and continues to entrench itself
in the midst of high level of unemployment; poverty and HIV/AIDS amongst the
majority of the majority of the poor urban and rural youth of our country.

The ANC YL was the first progressive youth formation to adopt the principle
of 50/50 representation in all it structures. This was a resolution in
ensuring that women occupy a place in the process of shaping and building
our society. However the biggest challenge is this noble decision in other
forums or institutions of power and influence has been reduced into numbers
and has been done in an elitist form, and secondly it has been conflated to
advance the call for a woman President under the pretext that automatically
under a woman President the struggle for woman emancipation will cease to
exist. This call is also made in a very opportunistic and poisonous
environment given the challenges we have alluded to earlier in relation to
the Deputy President of the ANC. This will deflate us from addressing the
concrete challenges that faces women of our country who are less off. If we
allow this noble principle to be hijacked for opportunistic and political
agendas we can kiss our revolution goodbye and wish it a happy journey.

The SACP earlier this year released its Central Committee Discussion
Document on State Power, the discussion document emanates from the SACP
Special Congress resolution that was taken in eThekwini, which the YCL was
in the forefront of lobbying for. Although the Central Committee Discussion
Document has been vulgarized and dismissed by some within and outside the
movement, but it has generated a genuine left debates amongst the
progressive forces in the country. The DD seeks to locate the role of the
Party in relation to power and how does the Party acquire power for the
interests of the class it represents. As Marxism taught us that the “State
is the instrument of class rule.”

How then do we make sure that the power that lies in the State, the
Presidency, the Executive, Defence and Parliament is used, with and for the
working class and the poor? As the YCL we invite our allies, our brothers in
arms to be part of these discussions as they have bearing on our future as
the youth, and there is no future for us without us.




The year 2005 provided one of the poisonous situations for the unity and
cohesion of the movement and the flourishing of our democracy. This
poisonous and stiffest tests, emanates from the matters relating to the
Deputy President of the ANC, it requires that we continuously reflect on
these matters and draw appropriate lessons. Our approach of guarding and
maintaining unity and cohesion of the movement will be guided by our
analysis of this experience, and reflections on the underlying causes from
this quagmire, so that we emerge as a united force, capable of defending the
ANC and the National Democratic Revolution.

The SACP Red October Campaign will be tackling the transportation system,
and this will be a very interesting campaign for the YCL. There will be lots
of rattles and flies in the process to undermine the struggles of the
working class and the poor. The majority of our people rely on public
transport to work and live. This will be not a once off campaign, but an on
going campaign until it delivers the required results. We argued that the
R20 Billion for Gautrain is a waste of the taxpayers to fulfill the
childhood dream of the Premier Mbhazima Shilowa of owning a toy.

The fact that our brothers and sisters continue to walk to school and cannot
afford transport fee; those who are unemployed cannot go and look for
employment due to bus/taxi fare the struggle for quality and free public
transport remains relevant. The fact that we continue loosing more people on
our roads mostly young people the struggle therefore remains unresolved.
This puts the working class and the poor in gallows of poverty and the
periphery.

The key question for all of us, is why transport? Given the problems of
poverty, hunger and unemployment amongst the youth, but as the YCL we feel
these problems must be located within the overall challenges of quality and
free transport system in our country.

As the YCL we take this opportunity to salute the ANC YL, our ally, the ANC
YL on this important occasion. We call upon all young communists and the
youth to partake in these celebrations, as part of fostering unity amongst
the youth and defending the liberation movement as led by the ANC and this
can only be done through building strong structures of the PYA, through
concrete campaigns and the mobalisation of the youth behind a progressive
agenda.

The YCL on its part will contribute towards this call through taking joint
campaigns as well as its own organisational work. We must make that historic
statement by the late First Secretary General of the ANC YL & President of
the ANC, Cde Oliver Tambo a living reality that ours is not a paper
alliance, but built through struggles.

HAPPY 62nd BIRTHDAY



Issued by:

YCL National Secretary Cde Buti Manamela

For more information contact:

Castro Ngobese

YCL Spokesperson

082 678 2612/ 082 567 3557


1602 words




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