Johannesburg - The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) on Thursday called for wholesale changes in the make up of the National Executive Committee of the ruling party, saying this decision-making structure needed to be revised.
The ANC is nursing bruises as support declined massively during the local government elections on August 3, leading up to the party losing control of key metropolitan municipalities, including Nelson Mandela Bay, to the opposition party.
At a media briefing in Luthuli House, ANCYL secretary-general Njabulo Nzuza said the young lions have resolved that the size of the NEC needed to be reduced, and the structure needed to incorporate more young people.
“The ANC Youth League believes that the structure of the NEC must be revised. [We] believe that there is a need to reduce the size of the NEC to make it more efficient and effective and allow space for it to take decisions with speed and reduce bureaucratic behaviour,” Nzuza said.
The ANC NEC is made up of 86 members, some of whom are cabinet ministers, with the Top Six made of the president, his deputy, chairperson, secretary-general and his deputy, as well as treasurer-general. Nzuza said there was a need to change the design of the top six officials, and allow for two full-time deputy secretary-generals, a move that might leave secretary-general Gwede Mantashe out in the cold.
“We strongly believe that we must have a deputy secretary-general for organisational development and organising to deal with building of the structures and organisational capacity,” Nzuza said. “There is a need for a the second deputy secretary-general for monitoring and evaluation to evaluate the work of government vis-a-vis the resolutions of the ANC.”
Asked whether this was not a way to purge Mantashe from his position, Nzuza said in the narrative that the ANCYL was hostile to Mantashe was a “fairy-tale”. “We do not support the call made by Gwede Mantashe of people resigning. If he wants to resign, he must do so alone,” Nzuza said. “But what we are dealing with here is a serious situation where the ANC has experienced a decline. And as the Youth League, we are not going to be sidetracked. We believe that this is an issue of organisational design, and how we have handled issues.”
Nzuza said the ANC needed to regenerate as the situation would not improve if it did not. He said the ANC NEC needed to be constituted by more young people who graduated from the ANCYL. “The ANC must reflect the demographics of the country. It cannot be that in the NEC there are only two people below the age of 40 and they are representing the ANC Youth League. This creates a disjoint with the young people,” Nzuza said.
African news Agency