YCL on drive to upskill youth

The deputy minister in the Presidency Buti Manamela. Photo: Kopano Tlape

The deputy minister in the Presidency Buti Manamela. Photo: Kopano Tlape

Published Dec 8, 2014

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Cape Town - The Young Communist League of South Africa draft action programme for its upcoming national congress wants campaigns for better education to skill youths, and co-operatives to fundamentally change the economy, in what’s been dubbed “a new deal for working class black youth”.

But the league will do so without longstanding leader Buti Manamela, now deputy minister in the Presidency, who is not available for re-election when the league holds its fourth national congress at the University of the Western Cape later this week.

“It’s about time. We need a pair of fresh hands,” Manamela told the Cape Argus on Sunday after 11 years at the league’s helm.

He said the congress’s focus would be on “much more urgent moves” to redress poverty, inequality and unemployment, all of which disproportionately affected black youths. While a package of demands made at the league’s first policy conference in 2005 had been “somewhat realised”, there was now an urgent need to step up the pace, he said.

It is understood much behind-the-scenes work has been conducted over the past three months to minimise any bruising leadership contest. At this stage it appears Mluleki Dlelanga, the league’s Eastern Cape secretary, is the only nomination to take over from Manamela as national secretary. National Youth Development Agency executive chairman Yershen Pillay is set to continue as the league’s national chairman.

Discussion documents prepared ahead of the congress highlight the need not only for greater participation in popular governance structures, but also key concerns of stubbornly high levels of unemployment of young people, particularly blacks, and an eduction system which does not seem to produce the right skills to ensure young people can secure jobs. “We should drive local economic activity, at the centre of which must be youth, away from debt-driven consumption… away from the profit motive. This is why co-operatives must be seen as crucial and not as an add-on to simply keep the unemployed busy,” the league says in its draft programme of action to 2018.

Arguing for “free quality public education”, the league also says it must be “critical about the kind of education and the education system as a whole”. Hard questions needed to be asked about the effectiveness of education skills training, including from the private sector which the league said had evaded its responsibilities, student tertiary education funding, but also in encouraging members to turn to academia as a career.

The league’s proposals also look at health, particularly keeping an eye on primary health programmes, and the extension of school health services in partnership with the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union.

Amid an emphasis on prevention, health promotion and rehabilitation, the proposals raise the need for a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health rights programme, including family planning, access to safe abortions, and grassroots campaigns against substance abuse.

Cape Argus

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