Genuine revolutionaries needed: Gigaba

There was a need for "genuine revolutionaries" to protect the ANC and the alliance against opportunists, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Tuesday.

"There is an ever-urgent need for genuine revolutionaries within our movement to expose the opportunism within our ranks in whatever form it presents itself," he said in a speech prepared for delivery at Sun City in North West.

He was addressing the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union third national congress.

Gigaba said preoccupation of some with leadership issues and "palace politics" had nothing to do with the fundamental interests of the people.

"The perilous threat that a divided alliance poses is that the [national democratic revolution(NDR)] can end up being hijacked," he said.

The threat came from "demagogues and opportunists in our own ranks posing as the most militant among us".

"[They are] shouting high-sounding and yet opportunistic and reactionary phrases meant to hoodwink the masses of the poor to think that these are genuine militants," Gigaba said.

Gigaba said trade unions had a critical role to play in striving to create jobs, and in weathering the global financial crisis.

They should, therefore, be strengthened.

"This means that we in the progressive movement, led by the ANC, must cease engaging in an ugly beauty pageant about who, among us, is better than others, more democratic, more militant, more ethical than the others..."

Gigaba called for the "movement and the alliance" to be defended against the "sustained offensive emanating from both our opponents and within the ranks of some opportunists within our movement, all of them trying to influence the type of movement the ANC must become in future".

All talk of "generational mix" was deception, said Gigaba, and was an attempt to pervert the character of the ANC.

The term was raised by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema last year when he raised the issue of older ANC leadership handing the baton to younger leaders.

The league has denied that this was their way of saying they did not support ANC president Jacob Zuma for a second term.

Gigaba said to be relevant to coming generations who had no part in the struggle against apartheid, the ANC "must not imbibe bourgeois political tendencies".

The youth needed to be mobilised, organised and educated to ensure they took in the best values of the struggle.

"To leave the youth to their own vices will create a dangerous precedent in which opportunistic political tendencies might seize them and misdirect their energies and youthful enthusiasm in a direction contrary to where the NDR is headed, contrary to the interests of our people and their own interests as young people," he said.

The ANC had always recognised that young people needed proper political education and nurturing, he said.