Media Statement in response to the ANCYL and various other important development
18 November 2015
The YCLSA in the Province of Moses Mabhida, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) commends the SACP leadership in this province for holding a successful, intense three-day Provincial Councilover the past weekend. We are pleased with our participation and its outcomes, particularly as it relates to re-asserting the independence of the Party and its commitment to the revolutionary alliance which is by and large the product of the Communist Party and revolutionary cadres who selflessly dedicated their lives to forging a strong programmatic unity amongst cadres from varying ideological backgrounds at the height of colonial oppression in our country.
We are reinvigorated by the courageous message delivered by our Party’s General Secretary, Cde Blade Nzimande, whoreminded us of our duty to push the private sector as a whole, including especially the financial sector in particular to contribute towards the much needed funding of higher, technical and vocational education and training of students from workers and needy families who cannot afford to pay student fees in universities and colleges.
The private sector is the single most consumer of our country’s education and training output. Yet its contribution towards higher education in no way matches the degree to which it benefits from the struggling institutions of higher learning. The private sector’s consumption of our country knowhow and skills is by far disproportionate to its contribution to education and training which is found wanting.
Utterances attributed to the YCLSA Provincial Chairperson
The YCLSA in this province is disturbed but not surprised by the misrepresentation and distortion of the statements made by our Provincial Chairperson, Cde Sandile Dayi, in his address to the SACP Provincial Council. Equally, we are dispirited by the excitement this has caused in some quarters. Let us caution though that whilst the YCLSA is not in the habit of pleasing the insatiable greed of newsrooms by responding to every pep talk making rounds in the public domain as some self-proclaimed “super-revolutionaries” do, this time we see it proper that misinterpretation of facts should be corrected here and now.
First and foremost let us remind everyone that the statement delivered by Cde Sandile was not his, but that of the YCLSA as a unitary organisation and any attempt to single him out is but a childish play that will only end up in a setback.
The utterances have been misquoted and as a result interpreted out of the context and debased from the message the YCLSA delivered to the Party’s Provincial Council. This is not a mistake, but a deliberate ploy to pit not just the Provincial Chairperson but the entire YCLSA against leaders in this movement in which we are an integral part.
Threatening the YCLSA whenever it invokes key issues which affect the reputation of our movement and country,such as the recent revelation pertaining to the possible expenditure of funds amounting to R4 billion to acquire a jet for the President of the Republic, President Jacob Zuma, will not work at all. As the YCLSA we would like to make it known to every citizen of this province, that it would be irresponsible to purchase a R4 billion jet, when our country has a GDP growth of 1.2%, highest levels of income inequality, deepening poverty and high levels unemployment amongst youth. This kind of spending resembles that of Mobuto Seseko, who lived comfortable life at the expense of ordinary Congolese. Therefore as the YCLSA in Moses Mabhida Province, we are opposed to this senseless spending. We view this as a slap in the face of those who languish in poverty, especially after the controversy relating to the R246 million spent in the name of Nkandla security upgrades.
We call on President Zuma, who has made a call for tightening of the belts when he officially opened the Medupe Power station in Limpopo recently, to make sure that the R4 billion spending on a jet in his name does not happen. Instead, the money must be directed towards skills development for the youth of our country including payment of the shortfall in universities and colleges affecting the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). The YCLSA says education and job creation for the millions of the unemployed youth and working class students must be prioritised.
In the first instance, the genuine student mobilisation against fee increases and sky-high student fees in universities is a direct result of the crisis levels of persisting inequality, unemployment and poverty combined with low economic growth, unequal distribution of wealth and constraints on national revenue leading to insufficient budget allocation to the Department of Higher Education and Training to increase subsidies to universities and support for the NSFAS. This same problems affect other government departments and human development priorities in a similar manner.
Instead of the ANC Youth League rising above the malady of factionalism, it saw it fit to call for a march to the house of the family of Comrade Blade Nzimande as the so-called solution to the problem. It cannot be that when reactionaries organise a march to the house of one leader of the ANC and the alliance we all come together, close ranks and unite in defence of the leader but only for some among us to repeat the history of reactionaries by calling for a march to the house of another leader whose serves in the collective leadership of the same movement and ANC-led alliance.
These things represent a factionalism of the highest order and a corrosion of revolutionary morality both in thinking and deeds. The ANC cannot be silent against the re-emergence of an infantile disorder in some individuals using the name of its youth league. It must call it to order publicly, for all in our country and the world to know that the movement can distinguish between right and wrong and take action to correct that which is wrong especially committed from within its ranks and structures.
The YCLSA will continue to raise issues without fear of favour and no factional declarations of “defence” in the name of the President will ever threaten us!
Factionalism by some individual from with the ANCYL in the name of the ANCYL
The increasing number of infantile disorderly utterances that are made in the name of the ANCYL are worrying to the YCLSA and should be worrying to all non-factionalists in our movement. The factory fault called Julius Malema emerged in a similar manner amidst public silence until his tendency was entrenched and ultimately divided both the ANC and the ANCYL when it was belatedly acted upon through public processes. Julius Malema’s attacks within our movement were first directed at the communists and class-conscious workers, with the General Secretary of the SACP Cde Blade Nzimande, among others, being the first target. Again, a faction from within the ANCYL using the name of the ANCYL does the same. What a striking similarity? But it is inconceivable that there are no handlers from behind.
The YCLSA would like to set the record straight.
It is common cause that Cde Blade Nzimande did NOT open any succession debate.
If there is any succession debate, that was opened by those who have said we are ready for a woman president; those who adopted resolutions for a woman president and even started campaigning activities, both covertly and overtly, including by subtle means, in the name of a woman president.
The call by the ANCYL that Cde Blade Nzimande must be suspended is factional and piece of rubbish. It must be condemned in strongest terms possible. The YCLSA dismisses it altogether with the unfounded allegations used to push it.
Our ANC-led movement cannot afford disunity and divisions– which, by the way, affects the whole of the alliance by spilling from one organisation to another. Any furtherance of disunity and divisions within the movement can only lead to its ultimate destruction. Qualitative changes both in nature and human history occur as a result of quantitative additions or subtractions to the composition of a quality. Conversely, quantitative changes occur with a change in quality. It is inevitable that should the disunity and divisions that are added to our alliance through the use of the ANCYL not be stooped to movement will reach a point of disintegration and something new will occur. We are asking the ANCYL not to call for “engagement” inside an “open door” while publicly and privately attacking the SACP and the YCLSA. The ANCYL must stop the attacks and call for engagements. That will not be sarcastic but genuine and consistent both in words and deeds.
What the ANC-led movement needs, now and going forward,is consistent leadership content and not inconsistency.
Where has the ANCYL been all along when utterances and the campaign for a woman president were made and pushed? Who has been suspended? Did the ANCYL made the call for the persons who made those utterances and have been pushing that call to be suspended? No!
Why?
It can only be out of factionalism that the ANCYL is being selective and, in addition, on the basis of distorting the Cde Blade Nzimande and the YCLSA and misrepresenting facts.
Over the past weekend newspapers published the views of Cde Sihle Zikalala pushing the succession debate.
Why did the ANCYL not call for his suspension?
It can only be because of factionalism that they are being selective.
By the way Cde Blade Nzimande never even declared any preference unlike those calling for a woman president, those saying we are ready for a woman president and unlike Sihle Zikalala. All Cde Blade Nzimande said is that it is wrong that our movement must experience a turmoil every time it enters into a period of leadership transition as it happened towards Polokwane and that a clear, coherent and consistently applied policy to manage transitions and deal with the problems thatarise in relation to it must be developed. The YCLSA stands by this clear leadership content without fear or favour and in no uncertain terms.
The YCLSA remains firm that those who divide the movement and dirty the name of the president, dropping it left and right in their factional and corrupt activities must be condemned in strongest terms. The President must openly come out against such persons, groupings and their factional and plunderpreneuring activities and lead a programme to unite the movement. The President must not allow the movement to be divided in his name. For he has has been renowned as a leader who defended the alliance and fought against the marginalisation of the communists and class conscious workers. The President must remain true to these attributes, act consistently, oppose zigzagging, build and unite the ANC and the alliance.
The frequent factional outbursts by the ANCYL must be called to order publicly and nipped in the bud. These outbursts seem to be a replay of Julius Malema when he started going out of order during his leadership of the ANCYL. Another silence may not produce different results.
Today, as the YCLSA we recall Karl Marx when writes in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, that:
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
The current moment needs leadership. We appeal to our movement to give true leadership, and to the ANCYL to stop diving this movement.
“A communist take-over of the ANC”: The KZN’s BIG LIE
Is revolutionary morality still the guiding beacon in our movement?
To this question the YCLSA believes the moral fibre that has held the alliance together is being systematically corroded by factionalism and private interests. In our quest to ensure that we stay the course and rekindle the revolutionary morality within the rank-and-file of this movement, we have become targets of the anti-communist and anti-class conscious workers crusade currently sweeping the country at the behest of those who claim the SACP wants to take over the ANC. This crusade, we believe, is underpinned by an attempt to capture the ANC by a new capitalist and neo-liberal alliance. In so doing it is pushing for the relegation of the ANC’s historical mission to implement the Freedom Charter to the latter which now could be postponed as a dream deferred which has festered like a sore and is set to explode if sanity does not prevail.
The much-vaunted National Development Plan (NDP) does not provide immediate relief given the damage caused by the neoliberal policy of the first phase of our democratic transition in particular the 1996 class project. Unless it is changed, as agreed by the alliance at its summit which took place on 30 August to 1 September 2013, the NDP is not likely to yield any dividend given the deteriorating revolutionary morality in the ANC led alliance. Unlike positing it as if it is a completely agreed to “blue print”whereas it is not, the alliance, led by the ANC organisationally, must complete the work of its task team that was established to address the fundamentals characterised by that watershed alliance summit as the genuine concerns raised by the SACP and COSATU on the NDP.
This reasonable call we are making reminds us of the words of wisdom left for us by Karl Marx when writes in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, that:
“And as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.”
It is through joint and agreed upon programmatic work that the alliance’s unity will thrive.
The YCLSA stands diametrically opposed to the weakening of the alliance and attempts at a palace coup. We also stand by SACP Provincial Council resolution to expose hypocrisy and corruption on the part of those who upon ascending to positions of power turn against the communists, class-conscious workers and working class in general.
The YCLSA rejects the insinuation that the SACP is a silent partner in the alliance when in fact the Party has much a right at the table we helped build.
Outcomes of the 3rd National Summit of Campus-based Branches
The YCLSA in this province is satisfied with the participation of our campus-base branches at the summit which took place this past Friday in Midrand, Johannesburg. The outcomes of the summit comes in the back of the recent successfulcountry-wide demonstrations against injustices of financial and academic nature meted out by management of universities against needy students.
We endorse the summit declaration calling for sustained effort to regulate institutional autonomy in the wider public interests and even curtail it if need be. Autonomy in institutions of learning has largely become the extension of old order white domination in our democratic dispensation.
The summit called for speedy efforts to transform the content of teaching and learning, curriculum, so that it is reflective and responsive to the plight of the working class, the overwhelming majority of our people.
YCLSA reiterates its call for the rescission of outsourcing of services, both “core” and “non-core” in institutions of higher learning. We remain fully behind the call for the total ban of labour brokers who milk our people of their most intellectual and physical property and give them a pittance of what is due to them.
Issued by Sandile Dayi, YCLSA Moses Mabhida Provincial Chairperson, 18 November 2015
