By Simon Nare
African National Congress Youth League president Collen Malatji has lambasted the recent convention of the National Dialogue, describing it as a tea party that excluded young people who should have made meaningful contributions about their own futures.
Malatji told journalists on Wednesday that any genuine National Dialogue should put the youth at the centre and produce clear goals. The meeting had failed in this regard.
Instead, he argued that the youth were reduced to being spectators without playing any role in the deliberations.
This should never happen again, he warned.
“Any genuine National Dialogue must put the youth at the centre and must produce clear outcomes-based goals, prioritising the economy, jobs and creation of education. Without youth there is no future.
“The agenda of the National Dialogue, we re-emphasise, it must be economy, economy, inclusive economy and economy. Anything else is a joke.”
Malatjie complained that even civic organisations, political parties and youth organsations from all political parties, all of whom have constituencies, were not at the table.
He added that credible foundations were not there after they pulled out. This was an indication that the dialogue was a platform created by opportunists to try present a narrative that the ANC had done nothing for the past 30 years for South Africans.
He labelled it as right wing, anti-democracy platform, set up and programmed by people who were obsessed with taking progressive movements out of power.
Malatji the National Dialogue must be corrected and the real one convened.
“I think let’s agree that the National Dialogue was a tea party of friends. The president was misled and invited to a tea party of friends who meet each over tea and console each other over tea,” he said.
Addressing the same briefing, secretary-general Mntuwoxolo Ngudle said the league has been making proposals to transform the economy since 2011 when its national executive committee resolved to formulate seven pillars to drive what he called the generational mission of the economy.
“We’ve been saying the battle for the South African soil is transforming this economy to work for our people. And we have been very clear making propositions that we must industrialise our critical minerals in order to create industrial capacity or industrial development in South Africa,” Ngudle said.
He argued that this was the path to create jobs and economic opportunities.
“We are not going to accept anything that is dragging us to other things that are not talking about transforming the economy, including acceleration land reform. Any National Dialogue that does not resolve the land question and the economy is a mere waste of time,” he said.
Ngudle added that the historic struggle of black people was over land and participation in the economy, and the youth league was not prepared to participate in any discussions that were not focused on that.
On the readiness to hold the ANCYL National General Council, Malatji said it was all systems go with discussions documents already on the table. He described the upcoming council as the real National Dialogue.
The youth league’s position is contrary to the ANC’s, which has come out in support of the National Dialogue.
INSIDE POLITICS