Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba addressed close to 300 delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers national youth structure congress. Picture: @Heidigiokos Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba addressed close to 300 delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers national youth structure congress. Picture: @Heidigiokos
Johannesburg - Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba has cautioned the youth to avoid getting involved in factionalism within the ANC and rather focus on their own battles.
“It is your duty to defend the ANC and ensure it is brought back to a good state of health. Not organising yourselves as a faction within it, which also seeks to capture its soul,” he said.
Gigaba, who addressed close to 300 delegates at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) national youth structure congress on Friday said any society which failed to focus on its youth was doomed.
“Every class or social structure and every society that neglects investing in the youth is doomed. The very propagation of the ideas of any class and social structure, as well as any movement depends on these deliberate and conscious movements in the youth as the rising generation,” he said.
The youth were advised to not allow the old guard to infect them when it comes to factional battles.
Gigaba admitted that the ANC was facing a difficult time ahead, like never before.
He also said there has been no focus on the enormous problems which lay ahead and nothing has been done in order to truly liberate the country.
“Until we have changed the ownership patterns of the economy, until we have changed the production and property ownership and affirmed the economic rights of the African majority and there create a equality. We have not done a shred of what we need to do, to liberate our country. “
Gigaba was emphatic that without a united ANC, there was no united tripartite alliance.
“If the ANC is not united, there will be no united Cosatu or SACP.”
Gigaba reminded delegates that the ANC was voted in by the people of South Africa and its role remained to execute the ANC revolution.
“So the issues of the need for the ANC to govern the country, to govern every municipality, to govern the majority, is not just so that we satisfy ourselves and pat ourselves on the back, it is so that we can execute our revolution, knowing that we have enjoyed the larger support of the African masses.”
He also said the youth must remain focused on the revolutionary tasks for a free and democratic society.
@heidigiokos
Labour Bureau