ANCYL members thrown out of Zuma address

2012-02-23 20:35

Johannesburg - Several ANCYL members were thrown out of President Jacob Zuma's ANC centenary address in Cape Town on Thursday, SABC radio reported.

They reportedly started to sing while Zuma was speaking. Police and Zuma's bodyguards ejected them from the Good Hope Centre.

An SABC cameraman was injured when he was hit while filming an anti-Zuma protest outside the venue.

African National Congress spokesperson Jackson Mthembu told the broadcaster the protesters had clearly intended to disrupt Zuma's speech.

Speaking in Johannesburg earlier in the day, Zuma said the ANCYL was a part of the ANC, and not a separate entity. It should present ideas to the ANC itself and within ANC structures, and that unless its proposals were accepted by the ANC they were not ANC policy, he said.

On February 16 ANCYL deputy president Ronald Lamola said the league's president Julius Malema would not be removed from his position by anyone other than the structures of the league.

"It is only the internal process of the ANCYL that can decide to elect or un-elect leadership of the ANCYL," Lamola said.

Malema, his spokesperson Floyd Shivambu, league secretary general Sandiso Magaqa, Lamola, and two other league officials were found guilty in November last year of bringing the ANC into disrepute and of sowing division in the party.

They were awaiting the outcome of arguments in mitigation and aggravation of their suspensions.

- SAPA