As daggers are drawn over the control of the ANC Youth League, cyberspace has not been excluded as one of the battle fields.
A status update on ANC Youth League spokesperson Floyd Shivambu’s Facebook page praising the decision to expel former Limpopo chairperson Lehlogonolo Masoga was removed this week after comments critical of the ANC leadership were posted in response.
The update, published on Tuesday night, was removed yesterday morning.
Many of the people who commented on the post were critical of the measures taken by the ANCYL against Masoga.
When approached for comment, Shivambu distanced himself from the update and threatened to remove all journalists as his Facebook friends. He has since “unfriended” and blocked this journalist.
“No chief ... that platform is not meant to be used to source official comment,” he said.
He claimed that he had three more people contributing on his behalf “because I have 5 000 Facebook friends”.
The comments (edited), which were deleted along with the post, included:
» The current leadership of ANCYL must be worried that during their term this youth movement has lost shape and (failed) to provide leadership in terms of unifying us ... We can say that we want to discipline our members but there is something wrong and you (need to) remedy this as leaders and stop embarrassing us. If you are calling this discipline, you are becoming a joke.
» People, this is the ANCYL not a spaza shop. So those of you who are lambasting comrade Floyd and Malema – it is a real shame that you want thugs like Masoga ...”
» You and your supporters should stop pretending like you have the best interest of the party at heart when your mismanagement and dictatorial tendencies are there for the whole country to see.
» There are no words to justify those charlatan acts of comrade Lehlogonolo (Masoga). Something had to be done ... to prevent this virus from spreading to all our structures.
