The ANC Youth League should demonstrate its seriousness about education by delivering free education to the youth of the country, says ANCYL provincial leader, Mlibo Qoboshiyane.
The ANC Youth League should demonstrate its seriousness about education by delivering free education to the youth of the country, says ANCYL provincial leader, Mlibo Qoboshiyane.
“You have to send South African children to schools and universities of the world, just like other African leaders such as Robert Mugabe did,” said the ANCYL chairperson of the Eastern Cape while appearing to address the president at a partially full Noluthando Hall.
Qoboshiyane was delivering a lecture on the 20th anniversary celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
He urged the party’s leaders to address the issue of nationalisation of mines and questioned how Britain, which he alleged does not have gold, acquired its wealth.
“The nationalisation debate needs sober people and it should be part of the agenda for the 2012 conference,” he said.
He warned leaders of the tripartite alliance to refrain from saying that nationalisation will never form part of the government’s policies solely because it is isn’t yet.
“[ANC secretary-general] Gwede Mantashe was the first leader to bring up the nationalisation debate and as far as I’m concrened he should be part of the 2012 leadership,” he said.
Qoboshiyane added that all those who do not want the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) as part of the tripartate alliance must leave the ANC.
He recalled that former ANC president Oliver Tambo once said in Tanzania’s Morogoro that the ANC will be naked without the SACP.
“Blade Nzimande is a leader in his own right and also a member of the ANC, Mantashe is both an ANC leader and the SACP national chairman,” he asserted.
He told the ANC branches to rid themselves of internal squabbles and in-fighting and cited how one member boasted about his faction during an ANC caucus in Nkonkobe Municipality where intraparty fighting brought service delivery to a standstill recently.
“Some members run away with party files so that branch general meetings don’t quorate, others bribe other members for votes,” he said.
He warned the crowd to be aware of such people because the ANC was formed by poor people and shouldn’t forget it.
He also said that last year’s landslide election victory was a curtain-raiser for the next year’s local government elections where “the real action will begin”.
He appealed to the local ANCYL leadership to develop continuous programmes of action to address social ills and not to wait until national celebrations before they organise events.
Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Military Veterans Association leader Shabi Habana said Mandela was the first MK commander. He added that former president FW de Klerk should not be praised for releasing Mandela because he had bowed to pressure from MK.
“MK was formed in KwaNyamazane where cadres resolved that “izinyo ngezinyo [a tooth for a tooth].” He announced that MK have now changed their slogan to From Combat to Reconstruction and Development.
“MK is no longer about AK47s but development,” he asserted. He told the crowd that they support the ruling party’s programmes and manifesto and pleaded with the tripartite alliance to “crush emerging hooligans” who are obsessed with power and positions.
Local Cosatu secretary Sizakele Makabe took a swipe at government officials who commit irregularities when awarding tenders and said that people can kill each other because of tenders.
“Corruption is a cancer we should fight, because at the end of the end of the day it robs the poor of the services from which they should benefit,” he said.
Khotso Moleli, Young Communist League regional convenor, said Mandela fought for the unity of the tripartite alliance and said that former president PW Botha offered to release Mandela providing that he diffused the SACP which he refused to do.
“We are not going anywhere from the alliance despite being called names such as yellow communists,” he said.
He vowed that the SACP will uproot corruption which prevails in many government departments and asserted that Mandela was never corrupt. “There’s no room for corrupt-minded people in the government,” he concluded.
