Editorial: Young people cut out of politics

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The ANC Youth League goes into its long-awaited 26th national conference this weekend with scant fanfare, eight years after it last held an elective meeting.

It does so with little expectation that the gathering — if it sits — will deliver much in the way of decisions, or leadership, that will have a positive effect on the lives of the millions of young South Africans gripped by dire unemployment, collapsing services and poverty.

Delegates are set to battle it out for the leadership of the league with an intensity mirroring that of the party’s national conference last December. And yet their actions are unlikely to bring significant benefit to the young people they purport to represent.

Not that those young people harbour much expectation. Decades of fighting surrogate battles on behalf of a succession of ANC factions has cost the league its credibility.

The same can be said for its graduates who moved into the legislatures to take forward the interest of the generations that came after them. Too often conspicuous consumption and corrupt behaviour has been the result.

The distance between the leadership of the Young Lions and their age mates in society has increased with time and with it their ability to understand and articulate the needs of young people beyond the party ranks.

The inability of political party youth formations to capture the imagination — and the interests — of South Africa’s young people is not limited to the ANC alone. The Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade, like the ANC, is an echo chamber run by an acting leadership appointed by the party’s national leadership.

The rhetoric of the Economic Freedom Fighters may appeal to young people, but it too has focused more on political power than on furthering the interests of young people.

The Democratic Alliance Youth and the Democratic Alliance Students Organisation no longer command the support that they once did — or play the role that they did in the party.

With an election a year away and apathy among young voters endemic, the ANC youth delegates this weekend — and their counterparts in the other parties — will be well advised to look beyond rhetoric and their political careers and find ways to connect themselves with those beyond the walls of Nasrec.