ANCYL statement on the upcoming No Confidence vote
7 August 2017
The African National Congress Youth League reiterates its long held position that the South African opposition parties, marshalled by the DA and EFF, are engaged in an effort to short-change electoral democracy through a palace coup. Their bid to have a Vote of No Confidence passed against the President of the Republic, Comrade Jacob Zuma, is not a matter of commitment to constitutionality but an attack on the democratic choice of the majority- as expressed through the 2014 General Elections.
This attempt on their part will not succeed on 8 August in the same way that it has not succeeded before. The fact that they are a minority is not by accident but a practical expression of the continuing confidence in the African National Congress by the democratic masses of the people. As a result, the ANC representatives in parliament have to discharge their revolutionary duty of defending this confidence of the democratic masses by voting down this motion by the undemocratic minority of elite forces.
Herein, we want to sketch out the real objectives and strategy of this undemocratic minority of forces to effect regime change outside the will of the popular majority.
The strategy of these undemocratic minority of elite forces rallies around an attempt to plunge the country into political crisis by means of a palace coup; to be set in motion through Section 102(2) of the Constitution. They hope that this Motion of No Confidence would succeed and that, consistent with Section 102(2) of the Constitution, the President would have to resign with the entire Cabinet. To this extent, the Executive Arm of the State would effectively collapse and most likely lead to a situation of political upheaval.
However, their elite strategy doesn't end and that point. Their real agenda is to force a deadlock that would see the National Assembly failing to elect a new President within 30 days. If they were to succeed in forcing that deadlock, the Speaker of Parliament, who then be Acting President, would be forced to dissolve the National Assembly in terms of Section 50(2a)- leading to the Chief Justice having to declare the need for new General Elections.
In their calculation, they hope that the entire political crisis that they want to generate would have swung popular opinion against the ANC. Following this misguided logic, they have concluded that such a swing of popular opinion against the ANC would give them an advantage at the polls to either defeat the ANC outright or form a coalition government amongst their political formations.
This is the real objective being pursued through this strategy of a Motion of No Confidence against the President of the Republic: the removal of the ANC before the 2019 General Elections!
The ANC Youth League calls on the popular democratic masses of the people of South Africa to reject these attempts at plunging our country into a political crisis. The abuse of the Constitution and Parliamentary procedures to undermine the democratic majority should be resisted and combated.
All members of the ANC and democratic forces of South Africa have a revolutionary duty to rise up against these attempts at staging a palace coup. At the forefront of this political programme to defend the democratic majority will be the Members of Parliament deployed by the ANC. They have a duty to assert the right of the popular masses to determine their own fate and leadership against an elite attempt to shortchange democracy.
Members of Parliament that carry the popular mandate of the ANC have a revolutionary obligation to exercise their political work in an open and transparent manner. Their policy choices, in articulation and in voting, must be carried out in the open without a veil of secrecy as much as possible. This is demanded by revolutionary morality- an ethical demand of exercising your conscience out in the open.
Issued by Mlondi Mkhize, National Spokesperson, ANCYL, 7 August 2017
