The levels to which prophets of doom have stooped to rubbish the African National Congress demonstrates their level of desperation, said the party’s youth league president Julius Malema on Sunday.
Speaking at the ANC Youth League’s 64th anniversary rally in Witbank, Malema said this could only be countered through maximum unity in ANC structures.
”Those who stand on dark corners and proclaim that the ANC has lost its moral compass and has abandoned the Freedom Charter are merely spreading lies to advance their narrow, self-serving political agendas,” he said.
”We must not be hoodwinked into believing lies and half-truths the prophets of doom are spreading about our revolutionary movement.”
Malema said it was time to educate the ”political imbeciles” who have bad things to say [about the ANC] because they had ”unfettered access” to the media.
He said the recent campaigning by Mosiuoa Lekota, who has since been suspended with Mluleki George, had been the most ”idiotic” political performance the country had ever seen.
”What makes their dramatic performance more amazing is the shallowness of their approach based on the belief that the masses will believe them when they claim that the ANC has lost its soul post-Polokwane.”
The Polokwane conference was held 10 months ago.
Malema said any rot in the ANC would have accumulated over a number of years, when some of these ANC dissidents were among the highest ranking officials of the ANC.
”Surely the rot they allege has enveloped the ANC would have settled in on their watch,” he said.
Paying homage to the party’s founding fathers, including Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, Malema said their foresight and impatience for change created the ANCYL.
He said the league must recommit itself to the ideals these leaders embodied and the vision they articulated.
”Ours is a grand vision that aims to achieve a society where poverty is eradicated, our people live in peace side-by-side, free from any form of discrimination and all are equal before the law.”
Malema also spoke of the need to mobilise young people behind the vision of the ANC.
He said if Lekota and other ANC dissidents want to present themselves to the nation as ”messiahs and saviours” from an ANC that they claim to be ”drunk with power”, the least they can do was ”to tell
the truth and take the nation into [their] confidence”. – Sapa