ANC Youth League attacks peace group

ANT KATZ

Nzuza in the statement calls Israel “the enemy” and goes on to say that anyone engaging on Middle East peace “must consider their membership revoked”.

The person they vented their spleen against, was part of a group called Africans for Peace (AFP) who are currently on a speaking tour – sponsored by US Jewry – in the United States.

A representative of AFP, former ANC bad boy and Wits student leader Klaas Mokgomole, in turn hit out at Nzuza, insisting that the ANCYL could not carry out the threat to revoke the ANC membership of those in the US.

“We are not breaking any party rules,” Mokgomole said, adding that, if anything, they were doing the bidding of the ANC and President Jacob Zuma.

Mokgomole – who is one of four African for Peace members on the tour – was “anti-Israel” back in 2014 when he led a revolt by Wits students, forcing the abandonment of a concert by Israeli-born pianist Yossi Reshef on campus. Mokgomole was then Wits SRC president and one of two of the so-called “Wits-11” who were severely censured for their behaviour.

Today, however, Mokgomole – who spoke to the Jewish Report from America – says he has had his eyes opened. That is not to say that he is pro-Israel, he is quick to point out: “I am pro-peace between Israel and a Palestinian state.”

He changed his opinion after a visit to Israel on a South Africa Friends of Israel-sponsored tour. There he became aware that there were no major differences between young people in the two countries – and South Africans for that matter.

“I spoke to a lady in Palestine who only wanted to be free. She wanted peace. She wanted her children to go to school. And here we were (at Wits) disrupting concerts, showing pictures from Syria and saying that they were in Gaza – we didn’t know what it was about.”

On their American tour, he explains: “We are also speaking about the #FeesMustFall issue and exchanging ideas with US students on how they deal with the high cost of studies.”

He said their tour, which was drawing to a close, had been “very productive” in that the South African and American students had engaged and exchanged ideas and learned from one another.

“It is good to see how (in the US) they empower youth funding and to see the work student leaders do on campuses.”

AFP, says Mokgomole, “is a collective of young African scholars and thinkers whose main focus is to empower young South Africans to raise their voices and become independent thinkers”.

 He slammed Nzuza for making the ANCYL statement “without even communicating with us – without speaking to anybody on our side. We are a multi-partisan (sic) group and consist of members of the ANC, DA, other parties and even apolitical members.”

Mokgomole said while he wasn’t the ‘individual’ Nzuza was referring to, however, he was not at liberty to disclose the names of the other three AFP members on the tour.

Mokgomole says Nzuza could not revoke his or any of the others’ ANC memberships. “There is no rule in the ANC that says: ‘If you go to the US you will be expelled,’” he says.

“There is no resolution that says we cannot travel outside South Africa. And our president even encourages us to travel, even to Israel, if it is to promote the cause of peace.

 “Njabulo jumped the gun,” says Mokgomole. “This trip is about the message of the movement – pro-peace, pro-Israel, pro-Palestine. We are here to promote dialogue. Which is ANC policy. Zuma said himself in Parliament that we should go to Israel if we advance the dialogue.

“We love the ANC so much,” says Mokgomole. “The ANC gave us our freedom. Njabulo doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

Mokgomole is unhappy that the ANCYL is “in the hands of Njabulo. We are supposed to trust the organisation to him. We need our young people to be able to empower themselves and he discourages independent thinking.”

He expresses concern that if Nzuza “becomes our leader in the next 10 or 20 years, where will we be? He makes irrational and unilateral decisions. He knows members are not empowered and he takes advantage of that.”

That is how people are, says Mokgomole. “They are lazy to read, our young leaders should promote empowerment through knowledge,” he emphasises.

If he has learned anything from his US experience, says the former bad boy, it is that “we are failing to empower our young people with knowledge, to think outside the box”.