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Lamola: ANC must drop all the secrecy

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Former Deputy president of the ANC Youth League Ronald Lamola. Picture: Felix Dlangamandla
Former Deputy president of the ANC Youth League Ronald Lamola. Picture: Felix Dlangamandla

Ronald Lamola, one of the frontrunners for the presidency of the ANC Youth League, has called for the ANC to change its election process and allow for open campaigning.

Lamola said the ANC was no longer an underground organisation that needed to operate in a closed manner to avoid infiltration.

Announcing his own candidacy, Lamola said: “It is no longer a secret that we are campaigning. It must be out there. The process must be open and transparent so that we can also know who is funding whom.”

In the current ANC culture, leaders don’t pronounce their ambitions and often wait for local or provincial structures to announce their choices. This, however, does not mean lobbying and campaigning in dark corners does not happen.

There have also been allegations that the secrecy allows for money to exchange hands quietly, with delegates being bribed to vote in particular ways.

Lamola is one of several names put forward for the league presidency. Others include Pule Mabe and Kenny Morolong from North West.

The conference is scheduled to take place at the end of next month, but there are doubts about whether all the meetings of the branches, regional conferences and provincial general councils will have been completed in time for the conference.

Lamola argued that not only its youth league but the ANC itself had to be more transparent.

“We are now living in an open society where issues are openly spoken about. We don’t understand why there is secrecy.

“In an age of Facebook and Twitter, you can’t be holding on to old ways.

“One day we will wake up and find that we have to vote for a donkey because we never knew who the candidates were before a conference.”

Lamola was deputy president to Julius Malema when the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader was still in the youth league. This has sometimes been used to tar him with the same brush.

Lamola says the resolutions taken at Gallagher Estate where they were elected were still valid.

“We want to reaffirm the Gallagher polices, whose relevance is becoming more important than before, because inequality is increasing.”

He said the voice of the youth league had disappeared since its disbandment.

“The voice of the youth is not heard. We don’t think it was wise to disband, but we have accepted it.”

Faced with the reality of youthful leaders of the DA and the EFF, Lamola said the ANC should embrace a “generational mix” in its leadership.

But he was not worried about DA leader Mmusi Maimane.

“In my view, Maimane is a token spokesperson of white capital. White people needed a black face to speak for them. They could see it was no longer viable to continue with faces that they could not sell to the people.”

He said the losses incurred by the ANC-affiliated SA Students’ Congress in elections at tertiary institutions was the result of an absence of a national voice to speak on behalf of “progressive” student organisations

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