Progressive Young Business Forum will disrupt rebuilding of the League, with perpetuation of youth tenderpreneurship and youth by youth exploitation than promotion of true youth enterprise.
*by Sive Madala Gumenge* It is hardly a month after government convened a Presidential Indaba on the 28th February to 3rd March 2014 to focus on challenges facing young people, such as youth entrepreneurship and unemployment. Now our African National Congress (ANC) has launched a Progressive Youth in Business Forum, which will focus on youth entrepreneurship as well. I find this establishment as nourishment of youth capitalism which will spoil the youth movement and promote youth exploitation by another in camouflage of youth employment. Furthermore, it will function as a repetition of tenderpreneurship, which exploited the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) to a shift away from Enterprise Finance towards Education and Skills Development. In the Presidential Indaba which was attended by 9 Ministers and 9 Deputy Ministers, mostly coming from the Economic Cluster and the ANC's Economic Subcommittee, of course it emerged that youth entrepreneurship and youth cooperatives needs to be promoted by government agencies charged with the responsibility of youth development. It is an acknowledged reality that the youth is not participating as desired in the economy, hence it has been reported that the youth constitutes only 0.9% of South Africa's Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate of 8.9%. Nonetheless, the history of abuse of money amongst young people to build ANCYL structures and extravagant political living makes me worry of this forum, particularly in this process of rebuilding the ANCYL from the tenderpreneurship legacy of Julius Malema and Brett Kebbel ghost. With the low economic participation of young people expresses itself in high levels of unemployment, poverty, illiteracy amongst youth and lack of exposure to sustainable livelihoods, which in turn exposes young people to social ills. However, the promotion of youth enterprise and job creation should be the role of government through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Youth Enterprise Development Strategy (2013-2023), NYDA and other government departments. To circumvent a collapse of our youth's ability of comprehending the true meaning of economic freedom and youth entrepreneurship, the ANC and the National Task Team should perhaps politically engage on this progressive young business forum and its impact on path to rebuilding of the youth league. The leadership has presented this forum, for the youth to interact with policy makers and political leaders, and with an opportunity to share views and provide advice on policy making, but there are constitutional structures charged with that, such as Policy Conference for us to engage on. Rather the leadership of the ANC engages the leaders of government to give space to young people who have an interest to youth entrepreneurship. Today we have 14% of intentional entrepreneurs, which is well below average for efficiency-driven countries of 27% and perceived opportunities for the youth is 39%, the lowest of the Sub-Saharan African countries. Therefore, platforms such as Brics Young Entrepreneurship Expo & Conference in 2015 would be for promotion of youth enterprise, not within the ANC. Despite the diminutive statistics about economic participation amongst youth but the ANC must always preserve its moral integrity as a revolutionary disciplined of the Left and not create a monster for its youth, as this forum will attract those who will want to be close to leadership and even sustain leadership with money. This forum will perpetuate patronage, youth by youth exploitation and abuse of money for political relevance. Therefore, this forum must be watched carefully not to hijack the moral standpoint of the need to rebuild the image and structures of the youth movement. *Sive Madala Gumenge* is ANCYL RTT Dullah Omar Region (Cape Metro) Head of Education, Former SASCO Western Cape Provincial Executive Committee and Former YCLSA District Deputy Secretary of the Brian Bunting (Cape Metro) and holds a BTech in Business Management majoring in Entrepreneurship. (*He writes in his personal capacity). * -- *Sive Madala Gumenge* *Head of Education* *African National Congress Youth League* *Dullah Omar Region (Cape Metro)* *Western Cape Province* *083 7172 635 or 076 8945 800* -- -- 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] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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