The ANC Youth League
Clive Glaser
Ohio University Press
Athens
Contents
The road to Bloemfontein, 1940–1949
Loyalists and rebels, 1950–1960
The return of the youth, 1961–1990
The Youth League reborn, 1990–2003
The new rebellion, 2004–2012
Concluding notes: Class of ’44 vs Class of ’04
Ohio Short Histories of Africa
Index
1
Introduction
Scarcely a day has gone by since the African National Congress’s Polokwane conference in December 2007 when Julius Malema or the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) has not been in the news for one reason or another. In spite of the fact that he has never occupied a senior leadership position in the ruling party, Malema, until recently president of the ANCYL, has become probably the most recognisable political face in South Africa. His controversial attacks on senior ANC leaders, his treatment of the media, his racially provocative statements, his stance on nationalisation as well as his own conspicuous consumption have fed a media frenzy. He seems to be feared, loathed and adored by various constituencies in equal measure. His expulsion at the end of February 2012 provoked relief and anger, joy and despair in different quarters. But how much does the wider public actually know about the inner workings of the ANCYL and its relationship with the ANC?
There is little doubt that the ANCYL played a pivotal role in the so-called Polokwane revolution, which brought Jacob Zuma and his followers to power, yet it remains difficult to assess just how influential it is within the ANC. The current Youth League likes to draw comparisons between itself and the generation of Mandela & Co., which founded the movement in the 1940s and effectively seized control of the ANC in 1949. This has focused recent attention on the history of the earlier Youth League. Is the current Youth League comparable? Are there interesting historical lessons that can be drawn from the earlier phase of Youth League history? How has the Youth League evolved over the decades? Not surprisingly, politicians themselves provide only very crude accounts of organisational history, accounts that inevitably suit their contemporary political objectives.
This book offers an alternative history, one which, I hope, highlights the complexities of the ANCYL’s organisational history, yet remains easily accessible to a non-academic audience. At the same time I attempt to do something that has not been done before: to write a history of the entire lifespan of the ANCYL from its inception until March 2012. I have not had the time to conduct in-depth primary research; rather, I have worked mostly with available secondary sources, published and otherwise, and pulled them together into an overview. If this serves to provoke new primary research on the subject, I would be delighted.
There is a wealth of material on the early Youth League (from 1944 to 1960). Gail Gerhart, Bob Edgar and Tom Lodge have written extensively on the philosophy and personality of the early Youth League, as well as on the 1949 ‘coup’ and the Pan Africanist split. Volumes 2 and 3 of the magisterial From Protest to Challenge series are, as ever, invaluable sources. In the mid-1980s Chris Giffard and I wrote unpublished Honours dissertations on the ANCYL, which are still surprisingly useful. Biographies of leading characters such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Anton Lembede, Potlako Leballo and Robert Sobukwe have helped to provide some texture to this story. Aside from these more direct studies, numerous published academic articles have dealt indirectly with aspects of the Youth League’s early history.
Sources on the post-1960 period are, by comparison, sparse. The ANCYL was effectively dormant between 1960 and 1990, but important developments in both exile and internal youth politics laid the foundation for its rebirth in 1990. Literature on youth politics in this period is quite rich, but it has only indirect implications for ANCYL history. Aside from numerous newspaper reports and several useful websites, two published sources were extremely helpful in reconstructing the history of the post-1990 Youth League: Raphaël Botiveau’s published Master’s dissertation (translated from French), which deals with the rebirth of the League from 1990 to 2005, and Fiona Forde’s recent biography of Julius Malema, An Inconvenient Youth. A number of publications dealing more broadly with the politics of the ANC provide indirect insights and context. I am also grateful to Malusi Gigaba, the ANCYL president from 1996 to 2004 and the present Minister of Public Enterprises, who agreed to an interview with me in January 2012.
2
The road to Bloemfontein, 1940–1949
On 15 December 1949 about 120 delegates of the African National Congress converged on Bloemfontein for their annual national conference. They sensed change in the air. Although the ANC, under the astute leadership of Dr A.B. Xuma, had in many ways resurrected itself from the organisational doldrums of the 1930s, its political methods had remained cautious, cooperative and respectful towards the white elite. Now a group of young, articulate intellectuals in the recently formed Congress Youth League, tired of white paternalism and intransigence, demanded a shift towards a more militant style of politics. Moreover, with around a quarter of the delegates at the conference, they had real clout. Almost unthinkably, they did not support the highly revered Xuma for the presidency once he showed little enthusiasm for the Programme of Action, a blueprint for political action drawn up largely by the Youth League. Many in the old guard dismissed the youngsters as cheeky, irresponsible and impulsive. But they underestimated the passion and voting discipline of these young men. Within a day Xuma had been swept from the presidency, replaced by James Moroka, a prominent local physician who had agreed to support the new programme. The newly elected 15-member executive included seven Youth Leaguers. Another member of the League, Walter Sisulu, was elected as the secretary-general. The ANC would never be the same again. Not only had a new generation inserted itself into the leadership of the creaky old organisation, but it had committed itself to a new style of politics, which included boycotts, stayaways and civil disobedience.
Who were these young men (although three or four women were involved in some early ANCYL meetings, the leadership was entirely male), where did they come from, and what were their ideas? The story of the Congress Youth League begins in the early 1940s. But it is worth going a little further back in time to set the scene.
During the 1930s the ANC had barely functioned as an organisation. Following a brief flirtation with radicalism in the early 1920s and a divisive, somewhat maverick, leftist president in the late 1920s, the movement’s old guard reasserted its authority. Pixley Seme, an Oxford-trained lawyer and one of the original 1912 founders, was the president between 1930 and 1937. He represented the most conservative section of the ANC: Christian, Europhile, moderate, willing to work with the white government as far as possible. The left was effectively marginalised (although African members of the Communist Party were technically allowed to join the ANC, they were not made very welcome during this period) and the leadership drifted out of touch with the popular rural and urban subsistence struggles of the time. The organisational structures were also desperately weak. Finances were thin and poorly managed. Only a tiny portion of its membership was formally paid-up. Most activity took place at the regional level, but there was little national coordination and little consistency in branch structures. There were no full-time administrative employees, which made continuity in campaigns or policy virtually impossible between annual conferences. Even members of the national executive usually had to pay out of their own pockets to travel to meetings and conferences.