Building PYA structures for another decisive victory in 2011

Greetings principled and disciplined young cadres of this revolutionary movement, this is a specific message to leaders and members of the Progressive Youth Alliance. We have made every effort to deliver the youth vote to the ANC led alliance on the 22^nd of April. We were campaigning tirelessly, young people of this land know us because we visited every house, street corner, high school, university, technical college and even taverns because we knew that these are the places where we find young people.

Victory has been achieved but the question now is what lies ahead for our structures? We went in these elections with all the PYA structures intact and they were not just intact for election purposes, but for getting the voice of young people heard across platforms. We should capitalise on the vibrancy, militancy, vigilance and enthusiasm brought by the elections, in order to build and strengthen our structure for another decisive victory in 2011.

Leadership of the ANC Youth League under comrade Julius Sello Malema must go to provinces, regions and branches to make sure political activism is present in these structures. I know of some branches that have become dysfunctional. This thing of building ANC Youth League branches when we are preparing for conference should be a thing of the past. We should have strong branches that will monitor government and ensure speedy service delivery so that we don’t have problems with the masses come 2011 and further.

Regions affected by the Polokwane renegades such as Amathole should be launched with immediate effect. The ANC Youth League in that region should influence the outcomes of the regional conference of the ANC, so that friends of Mluleki George who are still in the ANC don’t get anywhere close to its leadership. This should all be done in the service of the people, with the vision of 2011 in this locality.

I know that the YCL follow what Lenin said in 1923 when he wrote, “We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all.” But I think it is high time that we intensify our Operation Khula Campaign so that Our Vision 2010 becomes a reality. Delegation of the Eastern and Western Cape was quite an embarrassment in the conference and the YCL secretariat should directly intervene in these provinces.

This was a Natonal Council where one would have never been proud to come from one of these provinces, more especially the Western Cape as it had less than ten delegates. Provincial Interim Leadership Core’s (PILC) of these provinces should make sure that the DILCs are established

The leadership of SASCO must make sure that all branches have gone to AGMs or BGMs so that we can run successful SRC elections this year again. The NEC of SASCO definitely knows now that some people who were elected in AGMs last year have defected to COPE and are now beginning to interpret the SASCO constitution as if it says they can belong to any organisation and be leaders of SASCO. The national and provincial leadership of SASCO should go down to branches and clarify this before we go to the NGC.

COSAS should make sure that it exists in all localities and where it does not it must establish task teams. I am one person, who will be willing to help COSAS build it structures in Grahamstown. In 2011 it should be the responsibility of COSAS to deliver the young scholars vote to the ANC led Alliance.

All this should be done in the service of the people in generally and of the youth in particular. By 2011 all young people must see the fruits of freedom to the extent that they would not need any convincing to vote for our movement. By 2011 a significant number of young people should be members of the PYA. As Julius would say, they should be seen in action. Let us therefore go in our numbers and recruit the youth of this country to join us in our quest of defending our revolutionary gains.

Backward Racist Zille, Forward Malema !

How do you feel when recruiting for the YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE?

Ask a young communist operating in our present society as to how they feel about recruiting people to join the Young Communist league of South Africa? The response will be like this, “Ours is a beautiful organisation which has gained fame for most of the good things that it has done and for the best things that it seeks to attain in future…” Ask them to continue answering the question and not to talk about what the organisation has done, but about recruitment, they will tell you that it’s difficult, and then ask me why?

It came as a great shock to me when we (as the Young Communist League) tried to recruit someone for our organisation, bra! The young lady said she was scared of communists.
This type of response indicates the dangers of capitalism quite clearly. It is not surprising, as we know that capitalism is based on promoting consumerism and fracturing society into classes of exploiters and the exploited. Because it controls the media, capitalism is able to naturalise its evils while painting communism as a threat to many people, even those that are not beneficiaries of capital.

From this kind of response, it becomes clear that capitalism is a system based on deception and wise lies that lure even the highly educated people. For me that lady is indeed highly educated, but as Lenin said in a capitalist society, the only education that you will ever get is that which deceives people into ignoring other ideals that are contra to it.

Our education system is mainly centred on capitalism and this means you only get to learn about Marxism when it is criticised or provided as a criticism to the dominant mode of production and distribution. In almost every sociological textbook in Universities, Marxist-Leninist ideals are only referred to when the dominant mode is being criticised.

I tell you, if you could ask someone studying economics about Marx or Lenin, they would never know them even though Marx and Lenin wrote a lot on economics. Even if you go to the economics sections in every university library you will find Marx, Engels and Lenin’s works in this section, but still the only people you will get to learn about are Adam Smith and David Ricardo who were liberal economists. For me, having a degree in economics means having a degree in liberal economics as it ignores other schools of thought.

A degree in economics would require knowledge of economics which will span across the ideological spectrum. This mean people will have to know what Marxism, neo-liberalism and other schools of thought argue on economics and this should not be inclined to one school of thought and the others presented as its critiques. That’s why we are proposing for the inclusion of Marxist-Leninism in the education curriculum but more specifically in an economics degree.

By this we will be able to end fears that people may have against Socialism and Communism.
This will also help us a lot in terms of recruitment; honestly I am tired of explaining the whole literature of Marxism before a person can fill a form of the YCL. I am also tired of having to convince him or her about the relevancy of socialism and communism today before the required R5 is payed. What do you think?