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ANCYL won't give in to pressure to reveal 'shock candidate'

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APOLOGETIC ANC Youth League president Collen Maine. Picture: Cornel van Heerden
APOLOGETIC ANC Youth League president Collen Maine. Picture: Cornel van Heerden

The ANC Youth League will not be strong-armed into divulging the name of the "shock candidate" who they want to take over from President Jacob Zuma.

ANCYL secretary-general Njabulo Nzuza told the media at a press conference held in Pretoria yesterday that they would not be pressured into pronouncing on the succession debate ahead of the party's 54th national conference in December this year.

“The names of preferred leaders for the ANC will only be made public at the party’s policy conference in June.

“We will not be pressured to release the names of candidates in a hurry because this is a long and strategic process, therefore the ANC Youth League believes that in such a critical year, which we have termed the 1948 moment of our generation, the ANC is prioritising principles of leadership over names of leaders,” Nzuza said.

Nzuza said the league would support leaders who would mainly prioritise the programme of radical economic transformation.

League president Collins Maine supported Nzuza’s statement.

“We will not be pressured to release the names of comrades who are likely to take over from the current president,” he said.

Asked where this pressure is coming from, Maine told reporters it was coming from the media.

“By constantly asking us to pronounce on the names of candidates, you are simply putting pressure on us,” he concluded.

Nzuza added that the league would support leaders who will advance land restitution and have a strong appetite to collapse white monopoly capital.

The young lions also accused Absa of criminality in the financial sector.

“It is evident that there has been criminality involving Bankorp, Absa and the Reserve Bank therefore this criminality must never go unpunished because it is what feeds white monopoly capital,” Nzuza said.  

Nzuza made these remarks following the release of a draft report, which was published by the Mail & Guardian recently, in which which Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane recommends that Absa pay back R2.25 billion to the Reserve Bank.

The report said it was because of an illegal and improper loan, donation or so-called lifeboat made to a now-defunct Bankorp, which Absa acquired in the early 1990s.

Economic issues were not the only highlights of the briefing. The issue of dehumanising homosexuals in the country was also brought to attention.

Nzuza shared a message of support to all those who are discriminated against.

This came after a visit to Ghanian Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, who believed that homosexuality was unnatural.

He said: "That's nature. Dogs, cats, leopards. Which animal has one partner? It's just like homosexuality, you don't have male and male. You don't find two male dogs, two male lions, two male impalas, two male lizards. You don't find that in nature. That is unnatural. There is nothing like that in nature.”

Nzuza called on all South Africans to protect lesbians and gays.

“These are fellow human beings who must be treated with respect and dignity like all human beings and no one has the moral right to speak ill, about them, as it dehumanises them.”

“Let us all remember that only God has the right to judge,” Nzuza said.

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