No winners or losers - ANCYL

2010-09-30 21:27

Johannesburg - There were no winners or losers at the ANC national general council, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema said on Thursday.

"If people want to celebrate victory, victory on what? Those are decisions of the ANC, there are no winners there are no losers," Malema told the media during a post-NGC briefing in Johannesburg.

"... and you know some of these people who speak like they are winners, they spoke there in the NGC, nobody understood what they were speaking about because they had no clear agenda of what they wanted to achieve at the NGC."

The league was celebrating that it managed to saturate the NGC with its views and that it got its way by putting the nationalisation of the mines on the agenda of the ruling party.

The NGC was viewed as a defeat for the youth league, as its proposals were watered down or shot down at the mid-term policy review.

President Jacob Zuma emerged strongly at the NGC, putting his foot down on ill-discipline and firmly ruling out prematurely getting into succession talks ahead of the ANC's 2012 elective conference.

'Misleading the country'

Malema said the league recognised that nationalisation of the mines would not be adopted at the NGC.

"We have always articulated that the NGC is an initiating process... We put the nationalisation of the mines on the agenda of the ANC, that is what we are celebrating," Malema said.

He cautioned, however, that some "faceless" ANC members and the media were deliberately misleading the country on the resolution taken around the contentious issue.

"There has been an attempt to distort a decision on nationalisation. There has been an attempt and we are not blaming any individual. We are simply calling for discipline.

"Let organisational decisions be communicated properly for everyone to understand.

"There has been a deliberate attempt to distort a decision on nationalisation not only from faceless sources in the ANC including yourselves, you are pained by this decision and you are trying by all means to water it down," he told journalists.

ANC takes cautious approach

The ANC took a cautious approach to nationalisation resolving to interrogate its pros and cons and look at international best practice before taking a decision.

The league's bid for a "generational mix" - the platform for its support of its former president Fikile Mbalula to replace current secretary general Gwede Mantashe in 2012 - in the ANC’s top leadership was shot down. The NGC resolved that candidates be "assessed in relation to what contribution they will make instead of representing a generation".

Malema saw no defeat in this: "What is the defeat there? Because we were going for that. We are more than fine with that."

He warned that Mbalula was being "set up" for an "attack unnecessarily".

"There is no youth league that ever said Mbalula must be secretary general. We want generational mix, yes, but Mbalula's nickname is not generational mix."

This, after the ANCYL leadership in the Eastern Cape, aligned to Malema, issued a statement indicating that it would lobby for the league to support Mbalula at the ANCYL's own NGC held last month.

At the ANCYL council, delegates sang songs in support of Mbalula replacing Mantashe.

'Abide by discipline call'

Malema said the league would abide by the ANC's call to refrain from entering into a succession debate prematurely and by Zuma's call for discipline.

However, he urged ANC leaders to abide by the NGC decision to enforce this discipline "consistently".

All ANC members should be subject to disciplinary procedures should they fail to toe the line, Malema said, irrespective of whether they were acting on behalf of other organisations.

"Its unfortunate that before even the ink that wrote the resolutions of the NGC gets dry Comrade Vavi decides to engage in a public spat which the NGC said we must not," he said - referring to Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi's recent comments on political "hyenas" exploiting the ANCYL.

"... Already comrade Vavi is insulting leadership of the ANC as hyenas."

Malema himself was subjected to disciplinary action earlier this year over public comments comparing President Jacob Zuma to his predecessor Thabo Mbeki.

ANCYL secretary general Vuyiswa Tulelo, flanking Malema at the briefing, said the league would press on with its bid to have disciplinary charges against Malema dropped. The ANCYL's attempt to have the charges nullified at the NGC was shot down.

"We still have that mandate. We are not going to push it under the table. In the policy conference we will raise that matter again and in 2012 we will raise that matter again," Tulelo said.

The youth league would now concentrate on taking its nationalisation of the mines campaign out into society to garner support.

It would also form part of the ANC's probe into the state's role in key sectors of the economy.

- SAPA