ANC Youth League president Collen Malatji has called on the league’s mother body to take a leaf from the young lions and not focus on internal contestations.
Addressing the closing of the Eastern Cape’s YL elective congress, Malatji said he was proud of the outcome of the conference which elected the league’s officials without a contest.
The weekend conference, which was marred with delays due to registration glitches, elected Lihle Chalo as chairperson.
Other elected officials are Nkcubeko Madlalisa as deputy chairperson and Luzuko Lugalo as secretary.
Yandisa Jubase was elected as first deputy secretary, with Khonaye Tilongo as second deputy secretary. Angeziwe Myeki was elected as treasurer. They were all elected unopposed after behind-closed-doors negotiations in the lead-up to the conference.
Said Malatji: “You are a very important conference comrades and I appreciate that when we called upon you to unite, you never disobeyed. I know it’s very difficult but we made it [to a point] since our last term, to the second term, that we want the unity of the ANC.
“We believe that the ANC will not champion the interest of the people if it’s too focused on internal divisions. We said in our Youth League that no conference of the Youth League must be contested or there must be infighting because we must show that if we can unite the youth of this country, which are the majority, the ANC itself can unite.”
He said the ANC cannot afford to be divided at the expense of the people of South Africa.
He again applauded the Eastern Cape ANCYL for electing leadership on consensus rather than having a contested conference.
“You comrades put your interests last and put the interests of the organisation first and that alone I appreciate as the president of the Youth League,” he said.
He said the Eastern Cape was a base for the ANC and the party could not afford to have it divided.
Malatji said if the ANCYL in the Eastern Cape was united, that would send a message to the ANC in the province.
The mother body is due for its conference next month where premier Oscar Mabuyane is due to go head to head with former ally Lalama Ngcukayitobi for the position of provincial chairperson.
“The leadership of the ANC in the Eastern Cape must be elected on consensus because any divisions of the ANC defocuses [from the] interest of the people of the Eastern Cape,” he said.
He said the people of the Eastern Cape were the ones suffering the most from the divisions in the ANC.
Malatji said that was evident because the province had the highest level of service delivery and unemployment.
“The province that is underdeveloped is the Eastern Cape. All the problems that are faced by this country are in the Eastern Cape. We can’t afford the Eastern Cape to be divided because the Eastern Cape must mainly focus on changing the lives of the people,” he said.
He added that the people of the Eastern Cape have continuously voted for the ANC because they believe it is only the ANC that can solve their socioeconomic problems.
Daily Dispatch