Johannesburg - The African National Congress Youth League will celebrate all its leaders - except Julius Malema who was expelled from the ANC in 2012 – the league said on Tuesday.
ANCYL secretary Njabulo Nzuza said as part of the 40th anniversary of the June 16 1976 students’s uprising, the organisation would honour its past leaders such as Fikile Mbalula, Malusi Gigaba, Sihle Zikalala and Vuyiswa Tuelo.
The league’s president Collen Maine said Malema, who has since formed the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), would not be recognised as he had “betrayed the movement”.
“As much as we acknowledge that Mr Malema was the leader of the ANCYL, he does not deserve acknowledgement because as you would know, he decided to involve himself in something new that we will not mention…so therefore we cannot recognise him,” Maine told reporters in Johannesburg.
Malema, who led the league between 2008 and 2012, was expelled for bringing the ANC into disrepute. He founded the EFF in 2013, along with his deputy Floyd Shivambu, with whom he was expelled by the ANC.
Nzuza said the league would host a youth rally in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, next week.
“The rally will be held on the eve of the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. The event will be held in the same stadium where the 30th anniversary of the June 16 uprising was held,” said Nzuza.
The league will be part of the main celebration led by President Jacob Zuma at Orlando Stadium, Soweto, on Thursday. The event would be preceded by a wreath laying ceremony at the Hector Peterson students uprising memorial site in Orlando West.
The June 16 uprising against Afrikaans as a medium of instructions at schools began in Soweto and then spread countrywide in 1976, with many young activists forced into exile to escape the wrath of the then apartheid government. Hector Peterson, after whom the Soweto memorial was named, was the youngest victim killed during the uprising.
African News Agency (ANA)