YCL+remembers+Joe+Slovo




 * YCLSA Media Release, 6 January 2008**

=YCL remembers Joe Slovo!=

The Young Communist League commemorates the 13th anniversary of the untimely departure of one of its own products [YCL member] and the late National Chairperson of the South African Communist Party [SACP], Cde Joe Slovo.

Slovo was a paragon and a thinker that reigns supreme in the galaxy of many working class and Communists heroes that the ANC – SACP Alliance has ever produced. His untimely departure robbed our country one of its leading cadres and agents in the reconstruction and development of our nascent democratic state we now all belong to.

Slovo was a selfless and dedicated Communist, a fighter par excellence for the working class and the poor. He knew that a better life for our people meant three basic things, namely shelter, affordable health care, quality education and quality life. In the words of our former President Nelson Mandela, Slovo was not only a theoretician, but a pragmatist in our concerted and revolutionary efforts of changing the lives of our people for the better, “When the working people start enjoying, as a right, a roof over their heads, affordable medical care, quality education and a rising standard of living, they will be right to say Comrade Joe was a chief architect who helped lay the foundation for a better life”.

Over the past 13 years of our nascent democratic dispensation the majority of our people, especially the youth have not benefited from the freedom that Slovo had dedicated to build. Instead, big business has benefited a lot living the majority of our people in the gallows of poverty. Today, 70% young people have joined the unemployment queue; 51% of those live below the poverty line; only 20% of youth are furthering their studies and 55% of the prison population falls under the youth category. The challenge is to empower the youth with education, skills and opportunities, and not through patronage!

As the Young Communist League [Ufasimba] and the youth of South Africa in general we commit ourselves that the freedom and the democracy that Joe Slovo fought and helped to build benefits the vast majority of our people, especially the working class and the poor. We will mobilise young people across the length and breadth of our country to access education and go to school to acquire knowledge as part of building and defending the revolutionary gains ushered by the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

We further call on government and the Department of Education [DoE] to genuinely honour Joe Slovo in a befitting manner by making sure that the ‘doors of learning and teaching are opened’ without any financial impingements.

Forward to the Joe Slovo Right to Learn Campaign!
The YCL together with the components of the Education Alliance, namely SADTU, COSAS, ANC YL and SASCO will be during the course of this week launch the Joe Slovo Right to Learn Campaign.

The purpose of the campaign will be to draw together all actors in education to ensure that we have a smooth school re – opening programme. This will further accord administrators in schools to ensure there is effective and speedy registration, proper information for parents and learners who cannot afford and access learning for all. A detailed programme will be unveiled during the week. The YCL will continue to strive for free, quality and compulsory education for all.


 * Issued by Young Communist League**


 * Castro Ngobese**
 * National Spokesperson**

By e-mail

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