 Malema relents on Cosatu, but bashes Blade ANC Youth League president Julius Malema says he has "no problem" with Zwelinzima Vavi's Cosatu but still believes that Blade Nzimande and the SA Communist Party have become irrelevant. The recently re-elected youth league leader told the Sunday Times he believed Cosatu was punching above its weight in representing the interests of workers compared with the SACP which, he said, was redundant and lacked leadership. "We have no problem with Cosatu, they are doing very well. Cosatu does not represent the working class in totality; they represent organised labour, that is the employed," Malema said. "What about the unemployed, reserves, the squatter camps and all that? "Cosatu, the SACP and ourselves should join hands to champion the struggles of the working class and that struggle should be ordinarily led by the SACP, but it is nowhere. "We want it to lead through a programme of action and not through press conferences and statements," he said. Malema's remarks on Cosatu mark a U-turn from the position he took at the youth league national conference, which ended on Monday, when he called on delegates to take over the responsibilities of the trade union movement. But he continues to reject the SACP and its leader, Blade Nzimande. He repeated his claims that the SACP had become a mere "lobby group" within the ANC and government, and said it had failed to live up to the ideals of its slain leader Chris Hani. "Chris was correct to say they must become a mass party so they can be felt on the ground by the masses of our people. But there is nothing tangible in terms of a programme of action coming from the party. "We are told of the financial sector campaign - what are the results, because our people pay abnormal amounts of charges and interest rates at the banks? "We still have land in the hands of the minority ... We are simply calling for leadership of the working class," said Malema. He warned that the ANC would find itself in an unnecessary crisis if it failed to heed the league's call to immediately open up the debate on the party's leadership. "Discussing leadership and nominating leadership are two different things. The nomination can be done in June (2012), we have no problem with that. "But who are we nominating? We should have an opportunity to nominate people that we talked about sufficiently in a robust and open way so that when June (2012) comes, we are not in a crisis. "We will know what kind of leader we want not only as the ANC, but also as society, because the ANC is a leader of society. Once that opportunity is denied, it undermines the whole openness of leadership," the youth league leader said. He said the withdrawal of his security detail by the government in October last year had not only been meant to put his life in danger but also to "humiliate me as a person". "From where I am sitting I am under good protection and I don't think that I am under any risk as things stand," he said. "In fact, I would have been in a more risky situation if I insisted that people give me security even when they didn't want to." -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . |
