Youth Day celebrated on Saturday gave top ANC leaders an array of opportunities to take cheap shots at each other in preparation for the run-up to the elective conference in Mangaung in December. The speeches had very little to do with the frustrated aspirations of young South Africans and everything to do with power-hungry leaders jockeying for positions.
Youth Day celebrated on Saturday gave top ANC leaders an array of opportunities to take cheap shots at each other in preparation for the run-up to the elective conference in Mangaung in December. The speeches had very little to do with the frustrated aspirations of young South Africans and everything to do with power-hungry leaders jockeying for positions.
An SABC television news bulletin on Sunday led with extensive coverage of Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s speech at the Eastern Cape's ANC provincial general council in East London. He warned the ruling party that it cannot continue to ask people to be patient for delivery, while their lives deteriorate to a state of nothingness.
The same bulletin then gave substantial coverage to another contender for the ANC’s top job, Tokyo Sexwale, who said that the party would not be able to unite a divided South Africa. Speaking in Alexandra, Johannesburg, Sexwale delivered a thinly veiled threat against the current ANC president saying, Once you are a leader don't stand in front of change, don’t stand in front of new ideas, otherwise ideas will change you.
Motlanthe and Sexwale are both clearly campaigning for the ANC leadership, even though ANC tradition theoretically does not acknowledge lobbying for its top posts.
“As a loyal cadre of the ANC, I will go wherever the party needs me” – is the outdated but frequently repeated mantra.
If Motlanthe and Sexwale are campaigning for the presidency of the ANC, where was the incumbent this weekend?
Up until the middle of last week, we believed that President Jacob Zuma was going to address the Youth League rally in Port Elizabeth. On Tuesday the Presidency sent out a general advisory saying that he would address the meeting. Three days later the same office sent out an advisory saying that instead of addressing the Youth Day rally in Port Elizabeth, he would go to Mexico.
Does this sudden change of travel arrangements tell us that long-term planning (i.e. the next four days or so) is not a high priority on the presidency’s task list, or did spin doctors tell him that he would be heckled if he went to the Eastern Cape? Port Elizabeth is, after all, a dangerous place. Sexwale noted that MK veterans had beaten up people they did not like at the main Youth Day rally.
It is worth noting that Sexwale, Motlanthe and Julius Malema received ample coverage in the news bulletin while Zuma, at a high profile G20 conference in Mexico, did not appear on our screens at all.
The big losers in the Youth Day celebrations were of course the youth, because leaders in the ruling party blamed each other for poor service-delivery, but not one actually did anything about it.
