The African National Congress Youth League in the Eastern Cape confirmed yesterday that it would be convening a congress in the province despite there being an interdict prohibiting it from doing so.
The youth league in the Eastern Cape previously disbanded its provincial executive committee resulting in a court order which interdicted it from holding a conference in the province unless it was convened at the instance of the provincial executive committee who were also to be participants thereat.
According to league secretary-general Vuyiswa Tulelo their action was not in defiance of the court order. It was simply a case of these officials not having been elected in a court of law.
“I don’t think the judge is an expert on the ANCYL just as I’m not an expert in law,” she told a press briefing in Johannesburg.
In other words because ANCYL officials aren’t elected in court they are above the law when it comes to matters pertaining to the league.
A useful analogy might be that nobody is born or bred at SARS and as such the next time the government is collecting tax perhaps Tulelo might pass that message along. South Africans in terms of her thinking might also ignore the police, courts and the government when there is no revenue because the citizens of this country weren’t put here by any of them.
Notwithstanding while they are ignoring the interdict she confirms that the league’s national executive committee (NEC) has instructed its national working committee to appeal the Grahamstown High Court order.
This of course begs the question — why bother?
The conference is scheduled to run from Friday to Sunday in Grahamstown and according to Tulelo any member who tries to prevent another member from attending will face disciplinary action.
We really must bring in some Kangeroos to play with Panjo. Must be loads of them outside the “court” that heard Lehlogonolo Masoga’s disciplinary hearing.
With regard to the league’s Limpopo branch she confirmed that the NEC had decided to confirm and recognise the leadership elected at the Makhado congress. In this regard she said that the league’s national NEC took strong exception to members of the Youth League “who choose not to follow and exhaust internal processes and choose to use courts as forms of relief”.
This in reference to the legitimate channels used by Masoga to stop disciplinary proceedings against him or calling for the reconvening of the conference wherein ANCYL President Julius Malema ordered police to throw opponents out.
The conference duly elected a pro-Malema chairperson, Frans Moswane, whom the Sekhukhune municipality are allegedly charging with fraud arising from the fact that he was paid a salary of R35 000 a month despite allegedly not reporting for duty since June 2009.
Another former employer, the Limpopo economic development department, wants repayment of about R146 000 after Moswane allegedly continued drawing an R11 000 monthly salary after he had resigned in 2007.
Accordingly it appears that both in the Limpopo as well as the Eastern Cape regard for the law is not top of the league’s priorities.
There’s a whole country in Africa which operates under a system that Tulelo and her friends can relate to. If they were to pop up to Mogadishu today they might find out what it is like to live in a country where people disregard the law.
Strangely the law which is being run by the government of a ruling party that they might have heard of.
Even more difficult to understand is the fact that they are grooming the future leaders of the party while sending out a signal to the million or so members of the ANC that the law is something you can take or leave.
Which might present a tiny problem if it is picked up by the 30-odd million people annoyed at service delivery in this country. They might decide that the ANCYL has a good point — obey nothing.
If that is the case try and look up any movies you can on the French Revolution and get the feel of what lawlessness looks like. In the place of the aristocrats they need just substitute themselves and find out just what a pain in the neck that was.
Very apposite and gave me a chuckle as well. It would be a stand up comedy show if it wasn’t so sad and arrogant.
I guess it’s a case of do as you are told, not do as we do. The ANC after Madiba is the worst thing to happen to RSA in the history of our democracy. Corruption and crime is their only example to us.
ANCYL above the law? What is the question mark for? As we all know the ANC is above the law so why not it’s ‘children’? We have a one party ‘democracy’ in South Africa and the only time the ANC and the ANCYL uses ‘democracy’ is when it asks for votes on polling day, or in the particular case of the ANCYL they eject those who would like to use their democratic right to vote against the Dictator that runs the ANCYL at the time, so they do not even get the opportunity to use their democratic right to vote. Stalin once said, “In a democracy, it does not matter who you vote for, all that matters is who counts the votes”. The ANCYL know this so they eject those who would vote against them even before the votes take place. Note Zimbabwe, Sudan and others in the failed states of Africa. “Might is Right” in all of them and voters mean nothing as the wrong people control the ballots. African democracy is defined as “One Man, One Vote, Once”!
The young lions might as well feel justified to ignore the courts and their judgements since their parents, the ANC, do the same when it suits them. Remember the ANC utterances everytime a judgement goes against one of them, judges are given unsavoury labels. Indlela ibuzwa kwabaphambili. The ANC has not and is not setting a good example for their youth league and they should blame no one for this.
Your article brings out more contradictions in this matter. But it falls short of tracking the ANCYL’s attitude towards justice to the ascendance of Jacob Zuma to the thrown himslef, including statements made by senior ANC political members like “political solutions” and judges being “counter-revolutionaries”
We said it then that this creates a dangerous precedence that erodes any remaining part of our democracy.
At a regional level it is observable in the defiance of the ICC judgement by the African ruling parties’ representatives.
Despite the fact that all their “political” parties represent less than a fraction of the African population, they have the arrogance of sublimating the interests of the rest of the world citizens, including the majority in their countries.
Youth does raise issues of concern about their lives everywhere, even violently, but no one ever allows their interest to dominate political space of a country’s life. The reasons are obvious.
Political expedience has allowed this to obtain in this country, to a point where established principles and institutions that humanity puts in place as a safeguard against political abuse, are in danger.
We live in fear, because the young and uninitiated rules the land. Their voice has been proven to carry the day.
It is the fundamental nature of governance itself that bureaucrats get to do what is illegal for everyone else.
The notion that ‘no one is above the law’ is true only in a symbolic sense, since incumbents assume the power to legitimize their actions via control over the legislature and improper influence over the judiciary, and in violation of the constitution, which is regularly and conveniently ‘interpreted’
This behavior is not restricted to SA or the ANC, the U.S. Federal Government probably being the current worst constitutional violator.
The Youth League members are merely acting in anticipation of what will soon be for them quite legitimate.
Surely Dahe Harris and the rest of his mates will soon write in blaming apartheid judges and the DA for this (and everything else)?
It is not so much the behavious of the youth league and their disregard for democracy and rule of law, but the total absence of discipine or even criticism of their behavious by their masters, the ANC itself.
Troubling……………..Worrying………..
Another great article, Traps. What’s even more sad is that the mother organisation has not said a word condemning its youth wing about disregarding court judgements. We are clearly heading for anarchy.
I wish your words got to 30mn South Africans, don’t you?
In today’s online edition of the Mail and Guardian we read that nurses in Durban ignored the Labour Court order that they should go back to work. The ANC is slowly and surely reaping the whirlwind that it has sown and that is so clearly expressed by the ANCYL. Thankfully Madiba is so well isolated from all of this by his minders that he can spend his last days in blissful ignorance.