Cape Town - Young people wishing to serve on the board of the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) have until Friday to submit their applications.
The sub-committee of the portfolio committee on women, youth and persons with disabilities and the select committee on health and social services has invited applications and nominations for suitable candidates.
There are seven board vacancies that will be filled following a parliamentary process that will include interviews by MPs.
Those appointed will hold office for a period of three years.
They will be tasked with managing the operational policy of the NYDA and exercise control over its powers and execution of its function.
According to the advertisement, nominees or applicants should be South Africans.
They should not be unrehabilitated, insolvent or be convicted and imprisoned without the option of a fine, among others.
The aspirant board members should not have been removed from an office of trust as a result of improper conduct.
Applications and nominations should be submitted to [email protected] by no later than Friday at 4pm.
The search for board members follows a decision by the National Assembly to restart the nomination process in February.
The appointment of the new board stalled in September after the National Assembly sent back the report recommending the candidates to serve on the board to the committee for further consideration.
This was after National Assembly Speaker Thandi Ruth Modise received complaints on the selection process that was followed by the committee amid legal threats in some quarters.
Modise later received legal opinion which recommended that the process to appoint the board be started from scratch.
“The matter is contested by various parties who are threatening to take us to court. As I said in the last meeting, fewer people are in defence of the process,” she said.
“The correct thing to do is to review the process, taking into consideration what every complaint that is placed before us is saying and in that process, being sensitive to the vacuum we talk about,” Modise said.
Last year’s NYDA selection process was mired in controversy amid the surfacing of a letter purported to be from the interim ANC Youth League task team forwarding a list of preferred candidates, including some of those recommended, to the office of ANC deputy secretary general, Jessie Duarte, prior to the interviews.
Among those nominated by the committee to serve on the board were daughter of former president Jacob Zuma, Thuthukile Zuma, political analyst Lukhona Mnguni, former NYDA board chairperson Sifiso Mtsweni and Avela Mjajubana, a community outreach officer in the office of Public Service and Administration Minister Senzo Mchunu and former Sasco president.
Others were former Tshwane University SRC president Karabo Mohale, former Young Communist League spokesperson Molaoli Sekake and Paballo Ponoane, who is the volunteer assistant to the ANC Women’s League Gauteng secretary.
Political Bureau