The Sarah Baartman region’s ANC Youth League has called for a leadership shake-up, endorsing one of its own to compete for a top five position ahead of the party’s regional conference in May.
The league endorsed its provincial executive committee’s additional member, Jo-Wayne Claasen, to contest for the position of the regional executive committee’s (REC) deputy secretary.
Youth League chair Mthunzi Mama called for the party’s regional body to reflect the demographic profile of the 533,253 people who lived in Sarah Baartman.
“For an effective and coherent political programme and organisational renewal, the leadership outlook of the ANC in the region, it must reflect the demographics of Sarah Baartman must reflect the 46% youth and 82.7% of blacks in general, the two biggest categories in the population are Africans and coloured people.”
“Guided by the principles of nonracialism and non-sexism, the candidature of Claasen answers two critical social science indicators — youth population and coloured people as a population of the motive forces.”
Claasen’s endorsement is the first since the regional youth league conference sat in December at Jeffreys Bay.
The league’s REC secretary, Mzobanzi Nkwentsha, said though they got pushback in Claasen’s candidature, they would continue lobbying branches.
The region has 71 branches.
“The narrative now is that this pronouncement is incorrect because it skips generations.
“We are told Claasen is too young to be an official, but we reject that outright,” he said.
Nkwentsha said the most resistance came from the Sunday’s River subregion, of which Claasen is a member.
“The region's leadership can never be effective because we believe they can never champion the interests of young people unless a young person is elected into that structure to support the youth league programme,” he said.
Claasen said a decision to put up his name would depend on the branches.
“All decisions are made by a collective leadership,” he said.
In 2022, the “old guard” made a clean sweep when it went head-to-head against an ANC Youth League-endorsed line-up.
Deon de Vos, Yandiswa Vara and Johannes Hobbs all returned to secure the top three spots as chair, deputy chair and secretary, respectively.
De Vos dismissed the comments made by Mama.
“I do not know anything about that. But I do not have anything to say about it in any case,” he said.
“The ANC has its processes on how it conducts conferences,” he said.
This year, the region is one of five due for elective conferences in the Eastern Cape, the others being OR Tambo, Nelson Mandela Bay, Joe Gqabi and Alfred Nzo.
The Herald
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.