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Thandi Mahambehlala is seen during the African National Congress Youth League rally in Germiston.
PHOTO: Felix Dlangamandla, Gallo Images
- The ANC National Youth Task Force has issued another deadline for the ANC Youth League national congress.
- The NYTT said it would spend two weeks renewing the membership.
- This comes as a structure calling itself the crisis committee that plans to go to court to disband what it calls an aging NYTT.
The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) has until a newly imposed deadline, November 30, to convene a national conference after a leadership vacuum left it limping.
This is the fourth date set by the National Youth Work Team (NYTT), a group of ANC seniors, since it was established after the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) was dissolved in 2019.
In a statement, the NYTT said that 40% of the branches had been verified, but that some provinces and regions had not submitted members.
READ | ANCYL crisis committee wants an injunction against the ‘elders’ who run the party’s youth affairs
The task force, led by members of the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC), Tandi Mahambehlala and Sibongile Besani, added that two weeks will be devoted to introductions and member renewals. The process will then be followed by general branch meetings and annual branch meetings.
“The national congress will be convened on the basis of branches, however, the provinces and regions that are ready for the congress may present themselves before the congress.”
The NYTT said it would also embark on a “Ziveze” campaign for members to verify their membership and share disputes.
On Sunday, members of a faction of the youth league that calls itself the crisis committee staged a picket line outside Luthuli House and handed out a memorandum of demands.
The committee is calling for the dissolution of what they say is purposeless “group of elders disguised as youth leaders” and that the members of the ANCYL provincial executive committees in each province be removed from office.
READ | Financially Paralyzed ANC Could Pay Youth League Conference Bill
“Having noted that the ANC is committed to playing marbles with the youth league, and undermining its constitution and that of the youth league, the crisis committee has resolved to initiate legal proceedings against the ANC, demanding a declaratory order and injunctions against the NYTT and all ANCYL PECs. Therefore, we have instructed our legal subcommittee, made up of ANCYL members, to initiate the legal process, “the group said.
In 2019, the ANC NEC heeded the call of many young members for a national task force to be established in their place. Then the NYTT was established.
However, many members of the structure did not approve of the task force members and found that they were too old to tackle the challenges young lions faced.
At the time, Assistant Secretary General Jessie Duarte said the NEC appointed a task force that had people who had organizational memory “because the only mandate of this task force is to bring the youth league to conference.”
However, many in the structure felt that the task force was illegitimate and consisted of elderly members of the ANC.
The league went bankrupt when the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg ruled in favor of then-Prime Minister of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, who sought compensation in a defamation case. Then he was forced to liquidate it.
The case relates to an incident in 2010 when Julius Malema, Andile Lili and Floyd Shivambu allegedly referred to Zille as a racist.
The youth league has had trouble holding a conference since 2018. This was the second dissolution of the structure. Malema (now head of the EFF) was president of the previous structure in 2012.
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