POLITICS

The call for generational mix is mischievous - Gwede Mantashe

ANC SG also calls for the sub-culture of insulting the leadership to be arrested

Address by ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe to SASCO: Fort Hare, May 4 2012

The NDR and the role of Students

Comrades,
Leaders and members of the youth and student movement;
I greet you all

It is always an honour, on my part, to have opportunities of this nature where I get to interact and share ideas with you. I, once more, thank you for this particular one too as it is another for me to further clarify the concepts and theory of our struggle, as espoused in our revolutionary movement.

First of all let me begin by a brief and overall understanding of what the National Democratic Revolution is and then proceed to discuss the roles of the various motive forces, classes and strata in society.

In the first instance, the National Democratic Revolution is about fighting the three interrelated antagonistic contradictions of class, race and patriarchal relations of power (best known as gender).

"These antagonisms found expression in national oppression based on race, class super-exploitation directed against Black workers on the basis of race and triple oppression of the mass of women based on their race, their class and their gender." (Strategy and Tactics, 2007).

Today's student is unable to grasp this reality because they grow up in a world where these contradictions are hidden and, therefore, less obvious. The reality is that racism is not only prejudice but also a stereotype and, therefore, in one's subconscious mind. Many students encounter these manifestations when they are excluded at historically white universities, which operate on the basis of Victorian standards. They again come face to face with all the three contradiction when they enter the labour market.

The basic understanding of these three contradictions makes it easy for anyone to appreciate the main objective of the NDR, that is, the liberation of Africans in particular and Blacks in general, as the majority that was excluded from the political system and therefore oppressed as a nation and exploited as a class.

The NDR has both the national and democratic tasks and should therefore strive to realise, first, a united state based on the will of all the people, regardless of race, sex, belief, language, ethnicity or geographic location. Second, it must strive to realise a dignified and improving quality of life among all the people by providing equal rights and opportunities to all citizens; and the resolution of the birthright of all South Africans regarding access to land and other resources.

Clearly the liberation of Blacks in general and Africans in particular is about affirming those who were not only oppressed but also excluded. Deprivation of blacks in general was applicable to all aspects of life ranging from opportunities, education and skills.

Young people must appreciate this historic reality so their consciousness could grow. We must appreciate that it is this consciousness that determines the role of individuals and youth and students as a group.

Fort Hare as an institution, together with sister institutions of Lovedale and Healdtown, has the history of generating activists and cadres for the movement. The 1944-generation of youth leaguers came through this institution. It is this generation that led our movement for over four decades. All of them were aspirant intellectuals with the capacity to analyse, generate ideas and lobby the mother body. It is this capacity that qualified the ANCYL to be the body of opinion within the ANC.

The 1944 generation of youth leaguers did not only draft the programme of action but it also lobbied for its adoption by the ANC in 1949, after it was sent back by the 1948 conference. This is the generation of Lembede, Sisulu, Tambo, Mandela, Majombozi, Mda, Nkomo, Nokwe and many others who played prominent a role in the 1950s, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. They were the core of volunteers for the defiance campaign and also the MK High Command, with Nelson Mandela at the helm prior to his incarceration.

The other prominent generation of the early 1960s also came through this institution, namely, Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani, Zola Sikweyiya. Pallo Jordan. Many other cadres of our movement went through Fort Hare and the Universities of Turfloop, Zululand, Western Cape, including the Wentworth Medical School and Medunsa. We are still benefiting from this intellectual capacity as a movement. I am going into these details to illustrate that young people in general and students in particular have an important role in transforming society into the future.

It does not start at the level of national politics but with the ability to take up issues affecting students. Clause eight of the Freedom Charter must be the starting point for students:

"The doors of learning and culture shall be opened.
The government shall discover, develop and encourage national talent for the enhancement of our cultural life;
All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands;
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children; higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit;
Adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass education plan;
Teachers shall have all the rights of other citizens;
The colour bar in cultural life, in sport and in education shall be abolished.

We are on course towards complying with the directives of our forebears who drafted this dream of a free South Africa. We have now set new objectives that are intended to take education to higher levels. In the 52nd National Conference we committed ourselves to ensuring that at least 60% of the learners are in no-fee schools and that target has been achieve and exceeded. We have also made a commitment that free education should progressively be introduced for poor students until undergraduate level.

The improvement in NESFAS is directed at ultimately achieving this objective. If NESFAS is sold to students from well to do families the capacity to ever achieve this objective is reduced to the minimum, as that is stealing from the poor. If students themselves can raise the red flag when these corrupt schemes are in operation they will be making an important contribution to society.

Having emphasised the importance of taking up issues affecting students and the youth it is equally important to ensure that they are not insulated from politics in general. You must take an active interest in what is happening in the ANC. Be part of the branches and avail your most capable cadres to be elected into the structures of the ANC. The fact that eight youth leaguers were elected to the NEC of the ANC in 1949, with Walter Sisulu elected Secretary General affirms the point that there is no limit to one's progress in the ANC so long they are active.

Leave the fact that in the early stages the ANC YL was almost a debating society trying to perfect the theoretical framework of Pan Africanism. When this developed into violent polemics the staunch Pan Africanist broke away and formed the PAC. When Sisulu was put on house arrest in 1954 comrade Oliver Tambo acted. In the 1958 National conference Oliver Tambo was elected the Deputy President and another former youth leaguer Duma Nokwe was elected Secretary General.

These points are concrete evidence that the fusion of generations has always been part of leadership development in the ANC. There is no need for calling for it as if there is preservation of positions for the elderly. Former members of the ANCYL are visibly present in the current NEC and cabinet. The call for generational mix with specific names representing this concept is sheer mischief in reality. This mischievous behaviour is what comrade OR referred to in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising, when there were those who wished to thrust youth and students to the fore and elbow out the ANC leadership at the time. He noted,

"Our adversaries tried to use the great contribution of our youth and students in the struggle to ascribe to the students the role of vanguard force in the struggle. On the basis of this wrong thesis, desperate attempts had been made... to form some youth political organisation specifically as a counterweight to our movement, taking advantage of the political immaturity of some of the youth." (ANC National Consultative Conference)

SASCO must discuss the policy documents and mandate their delegates to the Policy Conference so that your contribution can influence the outcome and ultimately the National Conference in December. SASCO will not vote but SASCO members who are active in the branches of the ANC have the same rights as any other member.

We are working hard on organisational renewal, so as to revitalise the values of the ANC. Discipline, as a pillar of any revolution, must be upheld. I always emphasise that discipline is not a disciplinary action but playing according to rules, respecting the policies, decisions, resolutions, programmes and the constitution of the organisation. Deviation constitutes indiscipline and should be dealt with as such. Discipline is not a tool for settling political scores and differences but equally indiscipline cannot be portrayed as political disagreement.

Many mistakes committed in the run-up to and during the Polokwane conference cannot be allowed to develop into some culture in the movement. We must openly discuss these problems with the aim of correcting them. The sub-culture of insulting the leadership must be arrested before it becomes a norm. Our attempts at correcting this foreign behaviour are dismissed as acts of incumbents who fear rejection at the upcoming elective national conference. This is premised on another foreign concept to the ANC, that is, the so-called succession debate, and thus making conference a source of anxiety. In December we are not going to a succession conference but a national conference where delegates will discuss policy and elect leadership. In the process some may be re-elected others may be changed in the normal course of ANC business.

We have a duty of fighting and defeating factionalism in all its forms and manifestation. Duma Nokwe explained how factions manifest in simple terms. Comrades support positions, not on the basis of their correctness but because they are put forward by friends and associates. They reject proposals, not on the basis of merits or de-merits, but on the basis of who makes the proposal. Comrades are loyal to individuals and groupings at the expense of the organisation. Factions are narrow, intolerant and destructive. They affect all our organisations in a negative way. Cadres of the movement must raise their hands in the fight against all the negative tendencies that are a result of a liberation movement ascending to power. These include printing t-shirts and singing song that are aimed at dividing the structures. They include unbridled ambitions and open fights for positions. We must be more positive in our outlook.

Let me conclude by reminding you that the ANC continues to celebrate its centenary programme, which is presently being observed in this province, the Eastern Cape.

This month we honour another of our movement's outstanding leaders, who in 1906 - at Columbia University in New York, proclaimed,

"The brighter day is rising upon Africa.. The African people...  possess a common fundamental sentiment which is everywhere manifest... crystallising itself into one common controlling idea... The regeneration of Africa..." (Pixley kaIsaka Seme)

Pixley kaIsaka Seme would later, in 1911, play a pivotal role in calling for the convocation in Waaihoek, Mangaung, in 1912, where the ANC was founded, declaring:

"Again, it is conclusively urgent that this Congress should meet this year, because a matter which is so vitally important to our progress and welfare should not be unnecessarily postponed by reason of personal differences and selfishness of our leaders. The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tongaas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten;.. We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance to-day."

Comrades,

It is due to the foresight and astuteness of this intellectual core that founded the ANC, that we are able to celebrate our freedoms today. As young intellectuals, they were visionaries who understood that our liberation would derive from our unity, our collective wisdom and our common action. Pixley kaIsaka Seme, like those early African intellectuals, lent his intellectual ability and skill to the fight against the divisions, jealousies, backwardness and ignorance of his day. As indicated earlier, subsequent generations of intellectuals in the ANC followed suit.

As we continue with the centenary celebrations, leading to and post the Mangaung Conference, the challenge is for SASCO to define its own intellectual contribution to the ANC today. What kind of ANC do we wish to have into the second century, and what intellectual capacity is required to achieve that?

But most fundamentally, how can the intellectual capacity in SASCO benefit us in transforming South Africa and assist us in overcoming the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality, which are the ugly manifestations of the contradictions of race, class and patriarchal power relations?

Issued by the ANC, May 4 2012

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