Ĺ aka la hloka manamane ga le na bokamoso; translated 'a kraal that does not have calves has no future, is a Sepedi proverb that anchors the significance of succession planning in society, organizations, and institutions. The African National Congress, the kraal in this context, has a history of its historical epochs being punctuated by youth imagination and in some critical instances, youth rebellion to unlock one era or breakthrough. In fact, the very idea to formalize the ANC into a Constitution-based organization molded the youthful imagination of Pixley Ka Seme and some of the liberalism-educated founders of the ANC.
Generations and/or age groups are agents of social change and
carriers of ‘intellectual’ and organizational alternatives to the status quo. Youth
have historically been sources of interrogating existing and established
societal ideas and demolishing the status quo, mostly through collective
organisation. As distinct members of society, generations are mostly glued to
each other by their collective experience of history and/or its events and
thus have a specific life chance to influence the outcome of ensuring periods.
In the continuum of human experiences, generations stratify in a dynamic way the distinct ‘age cohort’ experiences and package them into a ‘consciousness’, also referred to as ‘past memories’. Interior to this consciousness is the transmission of a common (political, cultural, economic, national) heritage in a continuously reflexive, interactive, and precarious manner. The context of ‘the transmission’ is conflictual and generally marked by continuous intergenerational changes, especially when the defined objectives of the founding generations are perceived as incomplete and/or inadequate.
At a time the ANC needed to chronicle what it stood for beyond the deputations to England asking for accommodation into the 1910 Constitutional Settlement, almost similar to the many deputations to Stellenbosch for new other reasons of being accommodated, it was the imagination of young Calata under the Presidency of Seme which facilitated the compilation of Imvo za Bantu, African Claims, in preparation for the post-war settlements in the aftermath of the Second World War. Imvo za Bantu became a document upon which political mobilization in Fort Hare during the late 1930s was also anchored upon. In fact, it can be argued that the stirrings of the nationalist ideal found structure through Imvo za Bantu, as the Communist Manifesto was negotiating its ideological hold on the struggle for 'enfranchisement' by Africans.
The prize of the struggle was articulated in the African Claims Document, whose culmination was the production of yet another youth imagination-inspired document, the Congress League Program of Action. It was this cohort of youth that gave practical expression to multi-racialism as a platform upon which African Claims could be universalized to accommodate minorities, and as a result executed the process of producing what would later be adopted as the Freedom Charter, at the Congress of the People in 1955. In this era, the youth cry was 'Freedom in our lifetime', which was later to have been found to mean 'Political Freedom in our lifetime', and this cohort of youth delivered on its generational mission in 1994, when some of its leading lights walked into a multi-racial and democratically elected Parliament as its members, ministers, guests, and President of South Africa.
The next generation of youth that created an epoch, is the 1976 youth, most of whom have the 1935-55 youth as their parents. They rose up against the apartheid state at its zenith of repression. They got the best of their monopoly of state violence, but that time and space changed the course of South African history. These cohorts went on to intensify, as a generation, the call for Political Freedom in our lifetime made earlier. This is a generation that created the most institutions within which society could be led to advance the liberation struggle. They established the BMF, BLA, ABASA, SASO, AZASO, AZASM, AZAPO, and many others. Youth militancy grew through to the 'make South Africa ungovernable' years. The stirrings of a middle-class-driven struggle process out of what the Black only university system was already observed. It is this generation of youth that repudiated apartheid systems. Rendering an order unworkable remains the strength of this generation.
Through the United Democratic Front and its profoundly consultative organs of people's power, a Mass Democratic Movement was created to hammer the fatal nail of rendering the apartheid state illegitimate in the eyes of the world. The MDM was in essence a combination of youth cohorts from the 1949 youth through to the 80s youth. The 1994 democratic breakthrough is the culmination of the Political Freedom in our lifetime generational mission of several youth cohorts before 27 April 2024.
The composition of the 2022 Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee as well as the delegate mix which reflected the character of its dominant membership is telling of the rise of a new youth cohort. The trend is in other provinces reflected in the composition of the Regional Executive Committees, organs of the ANC that are growing in significance when it comes to the ANC's National Elective Conferences. It is the regional secretaries that control the wisdom lists, and are determinant in how the regional vote is ultimately used to raise leaders in the ANC. In the absence of a clear ideological basis with which elected leaders of the ANC are referenced, it would seem the generation of youth it represents might help us to extrapolate what to expect as it ascends. The generations which led the ANC to date can arguably be classified to be those that lived in a context where discrimination was rife. They know what it means not to be allowed to be and do what you want based on the color of your skin. They have fought to remove the ceilings of class mobility in a non-racial sense. Their understanding of freedom might have been or still is limited by class interests whose manifestation could be good middle and upper-class life. There has always been the risk of this generation mistaking inclusion for total freedom, and this might explain its general generational posture towards economic freedom and or its adjunct radical economic transformation.
The generation of youth that was born in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, children of the ungovernability parent cohort, most of whom have turned 30 and above through to 45, is in ascendance as leaders of the new ANC, including the opposition complex. This is a generation that was born into a discrimination-free South Africa, they can be anything they dream to be. The limitation to this generation can only be the structural effects of apartheid as apartheid recedes into the standards spaces, access to finance areas, and general posture of the economic establishment towards economic transformation. The class position of this generation, generally dependent on the calibration of economic access through state means, is the new frontier of contestations in matters of economic transformation. It is this generation that declared for itself a mission of 'Economic Transformation in our Lifetime'. They congregated in Gallagher Estate, totaling about 2500 delegates, each representing a minimum of 50 branch members, and came out with some of the most profound economic transformation resolutions ever to come out of the ANC. As one captain of industry characterized the then leader or leadership, 'there was a mosquito in the tent', and it would seem the mosquitoes are multiplying in the tent.
The 'adiwele' cohort of the current branch, regional, and now provincial leadership of Gauteng, the softened other cohorts, including leaders such as the Provincial SACP Chairperson of Limpopo, some PEC members in other provinces, the looming entry of the Sandile Magaqa generation in KZN and many others, have all been leaders of youth at the tail end of a Mbabula Presidency and the whole of the Malema one. They are the Economic Freedom Front in the literal sense of the word, theirs is a generational mission. The posture of Panyaza Letshufi towards racism in general, and its impact on the skills revolution he has embraced as a mission defining his person, is a dimension of economic transformation coming up as an undeclared 'radical education transformation', so to say. The lived experience of racism and not discrimination that some in this generation have gone through is what South Africa has ignored to address as being causative to their posture towards economic freedom. It is this generation that knows how it feels to be the best rugby player in a model c school or anywhere in the country and not make the first team because of your race or class.
The implications of the Gauteng Outcome might not be seen in the immediate but will be felt beyond 2024 when this generation would have consolidated itself as the new leadership of South Africa, with no encumbrances to past political settlements and accords. Their relationship with the past which the dominant aspects of ANCness are about will at best be nostalgic and at worst related to the elders, they will be prepared to subject themselves to their leadership. It should be worrying that most civil society movements established outside the orbit of ANC influence, and interestingly by stalwarts of the ANC, do not seem to attract this cohort of youth, even those that are organized under Malema's EFF. The mushrooming of movements like operation dudula and the nodal leaders it has to date produced is a further manifestation of this generation.
As the opening paragraph declares, 'a kraal that does not have claves has no future or rather has little respect for the future. The decimation of internal institutions within which calves could be curated into better cows by the ANC is seen in the quality of the milk (policies) it is placing at the disposal of society. Because there are no calves that suck part of the milk before rationing for others can happen, there is an over pasteurization to levels where money determines which milk from other kraal scan be served with the over pasteurized ANC kraal milk. In Julius Malema's parlance 'le ge o ka e tima meetse, o tlo no bona e nwele'. CUT!!!
🤷🏿♂️Ping ga dina dipinyana gokwa
🤷🏿♂️Pele go eta di pinyana
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