107 ANCYL members appeal to Ace Magashule to fire 'eldership'

A group of 107 ANC Youth League (ANCYL) members have written a scathing letter to ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule demanding the disbandment of a task team currently running its affairs.

They are also calling for all members of the party who are older than 35 to be removed from all league structures across the country.

This comes after a sustained social media campaign last week calling for the removal of the national youth task team (NYTT) - dubbed the “eldership” - which was appointed a year ago to help the ANCYL organise its conference.

Their appointment also came after a sustained campaign, which first caught steam on social media, to remove the then ANCYL leadership, led at the time by Collen Maine.

At the time, the group which led the campaign was dubbed the “disbandists”, and it immediately met with scepticism the appointment of the NYTT, which comprises a number of serving ANC national executive committee members.

The group is led by coordinator Sibongile Besani, who heads President Cyril Ramaphosa's office in Luthuli House, and Tandi Mahambehlala as convenor.

ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe and former ministers like Malusi Gigaba, Nomvula Mokonyane and Faith Muthambi also form part of the structure.

“It is our assertion that the NYTT, together with all overdue provincial structures which are led by non-members of the ANCYL, does not represent nor reflect the 'youth' definition in the ANC and ANCYL constitutions,” reads the letter.

“We therefore demand the immediate removal of all individuals above the age of 35 from all structures of the ANCYL, as their continued occupation of those positions remain unconstitutional.”

The 107 members are made up of members from all nine provinces. Some of them have served in leadership structures, including provincial executives and student representative councils in different universities.

In its letter, the group argue that the task team does not have a right to run Youth League matters and that they, as the youth, were capable of taking the party to its next congress.

They further argue that the task team had failed to rebuild party structures as all provincial and regional structures across the country had expired.

The group criticises the task team for not only failing to organise a congress pre-lockdown, but that it was also not “agile”enough to come up with plans to hold virtual gatherings, as was the case with other parties across the world.

“It has been exactly 12 months since the appointment of this structure and the organisation is in a worse situation than what it was. All structures are dysfunctional, including the NYTT itself,” reads the letter.

It said members of the structure have instead been witnessed disagreeing about the decisions of the task team in public.

“We have, just in this past week, witnessed, with great shock and embarrassment, the NYTT issuing a statement attacking the ANC Women’s League – a statement which some NYTT members have distanced themselves from on public platforms.

“Is it also unclear where the NYTT derives the mandate to issue public statements, with extreme grammatical errors, on the affairs of other constitutional bodies of the ANC.” 

The group has given Magashule until Wednesday next week to respond to their demands.

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