TOM EATON | My 50 cents’ worth is that Economic Freedom Or Death is a dangerous game

As unimpressive as I find the ANC Youth League, I think it was cruel and unfair of Cyril Ramaphosa to warn it over the weekend not to be “asleep during a revolution”. Most of the ANCYL is now deep in its 40s and 50s, and everyone knows people of that age need more naps, revolution or no.

It was also particularly unkind to disparage the ANCYL at the very conference at which it finally reconstituted itself as a permanent structure after floating in political limbo for the last eight years. Given that Ramaphosa has also not existed in physical form for roughly the same length of time, it seemed churlish and frankly uncalled for.

The winning slate, however, made no protest, perhaps because someone had just explained the implications of the name it had given itself and it was having a small panic attack. It’s one thing to call yourself “Economic Freedom Or Death” (I’m not joking) when it’s all fun and games and you might not win, but now that the voting is done and people expect you to deliver, it does sound an awful lot like the non-negotiable, non-metaphorical employment contract of a rural Chinese bureaucrat.

Still, I quite like the name, and not only because it will make ANCYL job interviews much, much more efficient. (“Ideally, in five years’ time, do you see yourself as economically free, or dead?”)

First, by plagiarising and then poshing up 50 Cent’s 2003 mantra of “Get rich or die tryin”, the “Economic Freedom Or Death” team has reminded us of a simpler, perhaps happier time in this country, when the ANCYL still contained youths and 50 American cents were worth R3.

Second, by claiming the full spectrum from total success to utter obliteration, it forces its competition into the dull, beige, forgettable middle ground. You might have better policies, but let’s see how far you get calling yourself “Incremental Progress Towards The Middle Class Or Failure To Do That”.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s refreshingly clear. Last year, when an anti-Ramaphosa slate in KwaZulu-Natal called itself “Taliban”, many youth league members would have worried that they would now be required to pretend to have some kind of belief in something and kiss various ideological hems to access the patronage network.

I’m sure when former ANCYL president Julius Malema said the EFF was ready to die for Jacob Zuma, he definitely would have made himself available to speak at the funerals of the martyrs, as long as the press was going to be there.

With “Get Rich Or Die Tryin”, sorry, “Economic Freedom Or Death”, you get exactly what it says on the box. Well, mostly. When politicians talk about dying for a cause they invariably mean that other people should do it first. Still, I’m sure when former ANCYL president Julius Malema said the EFF was ready to die for Jacob Zuma, he definitely would have made himself available to speak at the funerals of the martyrs, as long as the press was going to be there.

Inevitably, not everyone was happy about the 50 Centers emerging victorious over the weekend, with some malcontents accusing the league of excluding certain regions before vowing that they would “exhaust all internal processes”.

I believe them, because they are members of a party that has done nothing for 15 years but exhaust our internal processes; slowly breaking down our resolve and optimism, and chipping away at our intellects. Like a relentless drip of distilled stupid, plink-plink-plinking down for aeons onto the cave floor of our souls, it has dug a hole in our internal processes that will take many years to repair.

The results and resolutions of the conference, however, will be difficult to reverse; and Ramaphosa’s address on Sunday seems to have given it the official ANC rubber stamp of approval. Indeed, said the president, he hoped that there would be a “new drive” in the league, though he didn’t elaborate on whether it would be a Range Rover or a Jaguar.

Much of the weekend seems to have been pompous, laborious and grandiose. Often it slipped into self-parody, as when Ramaphosa told the league that it “leads” South Africa’s young people and would be integral in persuading them to vote for the ANC next year.

But beneath all the vainglorious claims and rampant self-delusion, one moment of excruciating humanity stood out, revealing how perfectly the conference was a very expensive metaphor for our current national crisis.

On Sunday afternoon, shortly before Ramaphosa arrived to slag off their sleeping habits, delegates asked for a 45-minute adjournment.

They had been in meetings all day, they said, with no provisions other than coffee. They were, they explained, hungry, cold and tired.

And so they asked for permission to stop, and tried to warm up, and found something to eat; and then the hungry, cold and tired rank and file returned to the business of anointing someone who had specifically joined the youth league so that he would never be hungry or cold or tired again.

The conference pretended it was a gathering of kingmakers, but at its heart it was a jobs fair; a place for young people of limited prospects to demonstrate their one marketable skill (in this case, the ability to shill for a bankrupt and broken party) and to hope that there was still time left in the whole Ponzi scheme for a golden hand to reach down and scoop them up, up, up, into the eternal sunshine of the NEC, where money isn’t earned but simply inhaled.

I almost feel sorry for them.