Cry the beloved youth of our country! This is the battle cry as we celebrate the youth of 1976 once again this week. This is sadly the best way to respond to the state of the Youth League in South Africa, writes Lebo Keswa
For those who lived through the glory days of the Youth League it is painful to watch the utter destruction of that history under Collen Maine and his cronies.
Many ANCYL members cringed awkwardly this week when Maine could not give a decent account of himself in a terrible television interview on e.tv's Justice Factor. The discussion showed him up to be simply the most embarrassing and intellectually inept youth leader the ANC has ever produced.
But then again, this is hardly new information - it's the extent of his blasé attitude that worried me. Here is someone who cannot account for his wealth and has no shame defending his corrupt relationship with the Guptas on national television.
Instead of creating confidence, Maine didn't mind deepening the suspicion that most of us have always had - that he is a mere puppet of the Guptas. But many of us didn't think of it as bad as the leaked e-mails reveal - that a so-called media house can in fact have such temerity as to suggest to the Youth League what statements they should be issuing.
This goes to the heart of the credibility of anything that now proceeds from the mouth of the Youth League. It is in fact a confirmation that the league, too, is nothing but a front for both the Guptas, and by extension the so-called premier league - a league that's been fingered numerous times for funding the Youth League and in fact nefariously sponsored it to be elected in the first place.
Let's not forget that Maine, with all his ineptness, was considered MEC material by Premier Supra Mahumapelo not so long ago and that, in fact, when he stood for office used his incumbency to fight to be elected to that office, to the marginalisation of more deserving candidates. The rot goes deeper actually. The ANC must take full responsibility for this disaster. At the elective conference where Maine was elected, both the president and the deputy president showed their true colours about how little they think of the league by arguing that its central role was to defend the likes of Zuma, regardless of the nonsense they may be up to.
So instead of a revolutionary body that should challenge the decline of the ANC according to Zuma and Ramaphosa, the league is there as cannon fodder and it must go and sniff out counter-revolutionaries. Since the departure of Malema, the Youth League is a shadow of itself - nothing but an empty tin making a hell lot of a noise, drowned in its hollow talk.
It cannot be looked at to provide the kind of leadership that the youth of 1976, who we are commemorating this week, provided even with little resources. They in fact shame those youth along with leaders like Lembede and Mokaba who should simply be turning in their graves if their baton has been handed to political buffoonery represented by the likes of Maine. So what should be done?
The ANC needs to find a way to dissolve the current Youth League leadership without delay.
The structure has been deeply corrupted and can only do damage to the ANC. It must be replaced by an interim structure whose task - linked to the consultative conference - must be to take the youth of the ANC back to the drawing board about the very reason for the existence of the Youth League. At the back of this radical action the revival of the Progressive Youth Alliance must be made top priority to ensure the agenda of progressive youth is not destroyed by the epic failure of the ANCYL leadership.
This PYA will give directions to organisations such as Sasco and Cosas, which are still generally respected in the ranks of youth. The ANCYL's destroyed image should not taint these other progressive organisations and stand in their way in mobilising young people to support the ANC agenda ahead of 2019. Former leaders of the ANCYL now in government, such as Nathi Mthethwa, Malusi Gigaba, Lulu Johnson and Fikile Mbalula, have to be held directly accountable for the current state of the Youth League because previously, when they were tasked to revive it they gave birth to Maine and his current disastrous leadership, but once they noticed the still birth of a new league they simply walked away and did nothing to help steer the ship in the right direction.
This is not good enough. The ANC has to hold them accountable to dirty their hands once again as part of the rescue effort to see the Youth League restoring its former glory.
There is clearly something very rotten going on in the Youth League and strong action is required to fix it.
A youth league that is relevant has to have a robust relationship with intellectual thought.
Here we have a matric drop-out who is leading the league with no capacity for rigorous intellectual exchange with a very conscious and militant youth crop in South Africa who want to see radical change.
* Keswa is a businesswoman who writes in her personal capacity. Follow her on Twitter @lebokeswa
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent