From MyFundi

The history of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL)

The logo of the ANCYL, established in 1944.

The ANC Youth League was established on April 2, 1944 – four years before the National Party came into power in South Africa and started implementing an official policy of racial segregation – with the aim of involving the masses in a militant struggle for political, social and economic freedom. The League’s tenets were based on the principles and ideas of African nationalism, boosted by the emergence of a strong Black Consciousness culture in the USA that led to a spate of African countries pushing for independence from colonial oppression.

The founding members of the Youth League – Anton Lambede, Nelson Mandela, Ashby Mda, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo – would all play an invaluable role, as ANC leaders and struggle veterans, in the eventual demise of apartheid. (They were joined by, amongst others, B Masekela, Ida Mtwa, Lillian Ngoye, James Njongweni, William Nkomo, Duma Nokwe and Dan Tloome.) Lambede became the first ANCYL president, and Mandela its secretary. Most notably, Mandela would become the country’s first black president, elected after a majority vote in the first fully democratic elections in the country’s history, and would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation efforts together with FW de Klerk.

Birth of the Youth League

The prevailing circumstances of the ‘40s in South Africa contributed to the rise of organised opposition against oppression. As elsewhere in the world, industrialisation saw the large-scale migration of unskilled workers from the rural areas to the cities, where community organisations and trade unions sprouted organically from the needs of a largely black work force exploited in an unequal political dispensation that protected and supported whites while denying blacks basic civil rights. In this atmosphere, the militancy of the Youth League found support.

The Youth League’s manifesto, launched in March 1944 ahead of its inaugural meeting, stated, amongst others, that Africanism should be promoted (i.e., Africans should struggle for development, progress and national liberation so as to occupy their rightful and honourable place among nations of the world); and that the African youth should be united, consolidated, trained and disciplined, because from their ranks future leaders would be recruited. Their motto was: “Africa’s cause must triumph”.

According to the official ANCYL website, the League’s vision and values include arousing and encouraging national consciousness and unity among African youth; assisting, supporting and reinforcing the ANC in its struggle for national liberation of the African people; studying the political, economic and social problems of Africa and the world; and striving and working for the educational, moral and cultural advancement of African youth. The goals of the ANCYL include, amongst others, to consolidate the national unity front, to make a critical study of all those forces working for or against African progress, and to work out the theories of African urbanisation and the system of land tenure.

The Youth League developed a Programme of Action involving boycotts, strikes and defiance tactics. In 1949, the ANC adopted this programme, which represented a radical departure from the ineffective strategies of the past, and a transformation of the organisation into a revolutionary mass movement. In the next decade, this change of policy would lead to the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People.

The Defiance Campaign was designed to make the country ungovernable and force the apartheid regime to abandon its oppressive policies. Its success led to similar campaigns targeting specific apartheid laws such as the Bantu Education Act and the Group Areas Act. Although the programme initially led to the hardening of Government attitude towards squashing revolt, in the end the apartheid government had to concede the insustainability of its policy of racial segregation.

At the Congress of the People, held at Kliptown on June 26, 1955, the Freedom Charter spelling out the people’s vision of the kind of South Africa they wanted was adopted. This document would eventually become the basis of a democratic constitution hailed as one of the most progressive in the world.

Demise of the Youth League

The Youth League not only set the ANC on a new path in the struggle against apartheid, playing an active role in the campaigns, boycotts and strikes, but also increasingly influenced the face of the ANC leadership. ANC President Dr Alfred Xuma’s position was filled by the more militant Dr J S Moroka, with Walter Sisulu as Secretary. Many other Youth League leaders were absorbed into the organisation’s National Executive Committee (NEC) or other leadership positions within the ANC, for instance Mda, Njongweni, Tambo and Thloome.

Without its leaders, the Youth League lost its impetus and in 1960, when the apartheid regime banned the ANC and the PAC, the ANCYL died a natural death. Several other youth organisations, such as the South African Student Organisation, led by Steve Biko, took its place, although none could match the scope and unity that the ANCYL had achieved.

The Soweto Uprising of 1976 and the subsequent iron-fisted government backlash saw these organisations banned and their leaders imprisoned. Thousands of young exiles streamed over the country’s borders, necessitating the establishment of the ANC Youth Section. The Youth Section’s task was twofold: looking after the welfare of the ANC youth and mobilising youth against apartheid internationally. Again, Youth Section leaders would later play crucial roles in the country’s maturation into a democracy, e.g. Billy Modise, Joe Nhlanhla, Jackie Selebi and, mostly notably, Thabo Mbeki (who would succeed Mandela as president of a democratic South Africa.

In the Eighties, the mobilisation of the youth was led by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), which called for the formation of Youth Congresses in response to the rise of unemployment among the youth. In 1983, after the formation of the United Democratic Front that formed an umbrella for hundreds of organisations united against the repressive apartheid regime, COSAS and two other big student organisations, NUSAS and AZASO, formed a progressive youth alliance. Throughout the Eighties, students and youths would actively defy apartheid in the face of imprisonment, torture and murder, earning them the name “Young Lions of the Struggle” coined by Oliver Tambo.

Rebirth of the Youth League

The ANC set up a national committee to unite all youth congresses in a National Youth Organisation. In 1987, with the country restrained by a national state of emergency called by the beleaguered apartheid government, the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) was established. Under the leadership of Peter Mokaba, who had also served on the abovementioned national committee, SAYCO worked hard to achieve the unbanning of the ANC. This goal was achieved in 1990, prompting the re-establishment of the ANCYL by a Provisional National Youth Committee set up for this purpose.

In 1991, the ANCYL was relaunched with a view to supporting negotiations during the transition to democracy, with Peter Mokaba as president. Mokaba was in turn succeeded by Lulu Johnson, Malusi Gigaba, Fikile Mbalula and Julius Malema.

After 1994, the League’s aims were redefined as mobilising the youth behind the ANC vision of the country’s future, and looking after their socio-economic interests. The League has come to be viewed as a strong body of opinion within the broader ANC, and a prep school for future ANC leaders. This role was recognised by South Africa’s current (2010) president, Jacob Zuma, who came to power on the wings of vociferous ANCYL support and has been slow to rebuke current ANCYL leader Julius Malema for firebrand comments that had caused concern among many sectors of society and was seen to threaten the official post-1994 ANC policy of racial conciliation.

Parallels have been drawn between the firebrand political styles of Mokaba and Malema, especially after a court of law warned Malema in 2010 not to sing the struggle song “Kill the boer, kill the farmer”. Mokaba had also sung the song in 1993, but the ANC under Nelson Mandela’s leadership issued a public rebuke, as this clashed with the ANC policy of racial reconciliation. Early in 2010, President Jacob Zuma publicly rebuked Malema over his utterances and conduct that diverged from official ANC policy. At the time of writing (April 2010), Malema faced a possible disciplinary hearing.