Building+YCL+Structures,+Mass-Base+and+Vanguard+Role

Young Communist League, Discussion Document to the National Policy and Strategy Conference

 * 11-14 August, 2005, Makopane, Limpopo Province**

=Building YCL Structures for Socialism and Increasing our Mass-Base and Presence=

The essential and critical structure of the YCL is its branch. The programmes and campaigns of the YCL will be meaningless without the involvement, leadership, activism, militancy and vigilance of our branches. It is here that ideas are conceptualised and members express the views and opinions, and ultimately shapes and advance the struggle for socialism. For the YCL to actively engaged with the major strength is possesses, that of mass and peoples power, we need to strengthen branches.
 * 1. Building YCL Structures for Socialism and Increasing our Mass-Base and Presence.**

Branches are also significant in building a significant pool of leadership for the YCL. Of importance is the fact that they are at the vein of interacting with youth who are not mobilised. The re-launching congress recognised the basic role branches should play, thus, we should locate our critical layer of leadership at this level. When we say that the YCL is the home for Communist Youth, branches should bring this into reality as a major player in regard to being a training ground for young communist for the SACP. Therefore, all our strength and resources should focus on building strong YCL Branches.

The YCL should strive to establish branches [and units] in townships, rural areas, villages, suburbs, towns, countrysides, workplaces, campuses, mine compounds and all other places were young people are based. The minimum objective is to establish branches were we currently have SACP Branches, but this should not limit our potential to grow beyond the SACP, thus, indirectly increasing the organisational form of the SACP.

In doing so, branches should be engaged in the following tasks, to satisfy their vanguard and vigilant role:


 * Engage into continuous Political Education programme, aimed at introducing youth and members to the basic philosophy of Marxism—Leninism.
 * Introducing members to the constitution of the YCL through a Constitutional Forum.
 * Engage into focused and targeted recruitment of youth, particularly young women.
 * Lead in national and local campaign that seeks to undermine the power, presence and exploitative nature of capitalism.
 * Take up various civil responsibilities so as to identify and deal with the problems confronting youth.

Districts of the YCL have a critical role of co-ordinating, leading and shaping the programmes of the YCL towards branches. It is this structure that will play a critical role in knitting together work of branches within a region. The responsibility of regions moves beyond mere presence in branch and PEC meetings, to that of assuming a critical political administrative role. The process of accelerating the Launch of YCL Districts is eminent and requires no emphasis, and has become more important than never. Were possible, we need to identify district administrative centres to enable districts to accomplish this enormous task.

Provincial Executive Committees constitute an important link between the National Office and Branches of the YCL. All provinces should have an administrative office, with basic administrative resources available. The key tasks facing Provincial Offices are;


 * Administering and communicating to Head Office progress in regard to recruitment and launch of branches and District.
 * Assume political leadership in the respective provinces as it relates to Campaigns and Programmes of the YCL, and mobilise and monitor work of branches at that level.

As much as we appreciate the role of branches on university and tecknikon ground, care should be taken that this branches do not replace those in townships and cities were we have campuses. This branches should also be youth focused, instead of student dominated. Young people who work as lecturers, cleaners, general assistants, drivers and caterers should be the keystone of Campus based branches. Finally, we should look at the possibility of growing the YCL into ward—based branches.

The capitalist social system is characterised by poverty, unemployment and class exploitation which. This affects the section of society we seek to represent. It also provides political space for the organisation to mobilise youth to fight against this system. As the struggle against Apartheid was one through many forms and tactics, so will the struggle against capitalism.
 * 2. Increasing our Mass-Base and Presence, Strengthening our vanguard role through Campaigns.**

In order to increase our mass—base, and to be an advanced guard for youth development, youth interest and aspirations, we need to put a concerted efforts towards campaigns. The purpose of our campaigns should be to expose the brutality and inhuman face of capitalism, and to highlight the plight of the working class and poor youth. Inasmuch as most of the campaigns that we will engage into will not immediately usher a socialist society, they intervene in scathing minimal but qualitative bruises to the capitalist system. This also provides a platform to draw attention to the fact that societal crises are as a result of capitalist accumulation path.

We need to put our focus and target the following sections in our society and target the brutalities below:


 * Socio-Economic Conditions of Young People, Socio-Economic Transformation and Development
 * Education, Training and Human Resources Development
 * Health, Sexuality and the HIV/AIDS pandemic
 * Transformation of Gender Relations and Women’s Emancipation
 * Marginalized Youth and Minority Youth
 * Culture, Religion and Ideology
 * Criminal Justice
 * Environment
 * Sports and Recreation

Our campaigns should also be used to mobilize and organize youth behind the banner of Socialism and Communism, and to ensure that minimum but emphatic struggles are waged against capitalism. We can also use campaigns to educate youth about the social ills that are as a result of the system of capitalism, and how certain behaviors, conducts and addictions are as a result of profit and not entertainment. However, as the YCL, we should not fall in the trap of making noise and not providing solutions. The YCL can engage into alternative seeking Projects by encouraging the formation of Non-Governmental Organizations and Issue-Based Campaigns.

Our key Campaigns will be focusing not only on the class struggle, given our history, but will elevate the class struggle above all other forms of struggle, that is, gender and national struggle. We should focus on:


 * Free Education Campaign.
 * Jobs Campaign
 * HIV/AIDS

The tasks that structures of the YCL face to popularize the struggle for socialism are as follows:


 * All members of the YCL should recruit comrades into the organization and ensure that the organization grows.
 * We need to, as the YCL, especially at branches, ensure that we are engaged into meaningful campaigns that addresses the needs and aspirations of young people. We should also, as the YCL, link our programmes to that of the SACP and ensure that young people understand and participate in the programme.
 * Our other major task is to build the SACP. We should ensure that all young people above 18 joins and participate as part of the vanguard of the working class.
 * Our target are learners, students, young workers, rural and township youth and young women as a priority. We need to create an army of committed young communists within the working class and the poor to strengthen and build socialism NOW!!

The YCL will use the Youth Month to launch and sustain these campaigns. The chief message we should send is “Socialism in our Lifetime, Build it Now”! We should focus on reform rather than revolution.

In order to advance the interest and aspirations of youth, we need to understand where they are, what they are involved in and what is it that they desire see as a future society. Despite arduous poverty and unemployment, economic and social starvation and other related social ills experienced by young people, we have witnessed since the break of the back of Apartheid reduced levels of political mobilisation of young people. Towards the 2004 National and Provincial Elections there were sentiments that young people are apathetic and would not vote. Despite the high turn-out of young people, we should not be swayed that youth are indeed actively involved in political activism to resolve the basic and daily problems that they face.
 * 3. Nature and Character of Youth and the Struggle for Socialism.**

We witness this through reduced activism within the various organised youth and students. This is not only through progressive students’ organisations, but also with youth organisations that advances liberal, reactionary or sectional issues. There has been a rise in confidence towards the so-called social movements and issue—based organisations. These organisations, in most instances, present themselves as the sole representatives of either the left or the civil society and communities. They use reactionary tactics as an advancement to real social problems that youth and communities face.

The transformation discourse pass on without a strong, consistent and mass based struggles from the progressive youth sector. Since ’94 we have witnessed deafening silence from young people or issues such as education, land, housing, work, electricity, water, economy and empowerment. After this period, a trend emerge towards the strengthening of “board-room engagements” and a weakening of active mass based struggles. Mass actions we labelled as “outdated and unnecessary”, and that we have won our freedom as youth. We obviously need to raise this, and highlight the fact that the form of struggle has changed and that the challenges are bigger than before, without undermining the democratic victory ushered in 1994.

A lot of youth have focused culture, with kwaito music epitomising and at the helm of this modern culture. It is the shepherd of many who exploited its introduction and benefited from it. We should not take away the creativity ushered by this cultural revolution, we should acknowledge its role as a means of communicating a new message within the command of democracy. Our role must be to harness this, our brand of culture, and ensure that we channel a constructive point. Above all, young people are also active in commercial poetry, drama and arts. The YCL should use this to express the struggle of the working class youth.

There are sections of youth who see crime, prostitution, drug abuse and alcohol consumption as a way of removing themselves from the misery of unemployment and in-activism. The cost they cause to society is relieved and absorbed mainly by the working class. The YCL should understand this young people, and mobilise them based on their needs and issues.

Youth are a contested terrain, and the YCL should visibly engage within the ideological struggles that shapes their nature and character. We must link and be at the centre of students and young workers’ struggle, but in the overall, we must focus on township and rural youth because the majority of them are subjects of the social ills of a capitalist system. This makes them vulnerable and a potential for recruitment by reactionary forces. We must be at the forefront for of addressing their needs and interests. We must conduct our programmes and campaigns in a manner that relates to young people, without compromising the principle of communism.

The YCL has grown quantitatively in the past few months. With the unaccounted for members that goes by unreported and not properly serviced by Branch Executive Committees, Districts and Provinces, the growth of the YCL could be well over 20 000 members. These growth will be meaningless if it does not go by parallel with qualitative growth of the cadreship that goes into the YCL. We need to clarify what a YCL cadre is and what distinction does this YCL cadre has from others. Our organisational growth, therefore, should take stock of the capacity of the organisation to manage such growth; the programmes that the organisation engages into and how they responds to the needs of such members; the involvement of such members in the daily like of the organisation and the extent within which the YCL becomes a school for young communists and prepare them for activism and membership in the SACP.
 * 4. The role of a YCL Cadre.**

The growth of the organisation simply in numbers, albeit significant, remains insufficient. As the YCL, we need to inculcate a sense of responsibility in building the organisation amongst our cadres; a sense of pride in belonging to the YCL; a sense of commitment in executing YCL tasks amongst YCL cadres; a sense of selflessness in advancing the struggle for socialism; a sense of understanding what our vision is, shaped collectively with this cadre; a sense of unity for socialism in action; a sense of collectivism in executing the day-to-day work of the YCL and a sense of collective ownership, discipline and dedication.

Our role is to combine the vanguard and the mass, to grow in quantitative and qualitative strength and together influence the ideas that shape society. We therefore need cadres who will not only see themselves as members of the YCL and it ends there, but cadres who will also realise that they are being communist in the process. Part of the Political Education at a branch level, of course combined with our campaigns work, should seek to foster such thinking amongst the YCL cadres. We need to have political education that is linked to set aims and objectives, and is able to translate into required output. Let us then grow not only in numbers, but also in thinking and influence.

So, the key questions that we need to ask are: Do our cadres responds to YCL Campaigns and participate actively in such? Does the YCL work find reflection in branches of the YCL, local government, School Governing Bodies, Youth Clubs, Local Youth Commissions in instances were they exist and in the local newspapers, sports and cultural clubs, Peer Education centres and so forth? Do we have YCL cadres in those fronts and are their roles defined?

In advancing the previous section on what is a YCL cadre and what the role of such a cadre is, we need to understand that ours is a society contested through ideas, and that the dominant ideas influence and shape society to what it should become. For the SACP, the YCL is an important vehicle in advancing the ideas for the advancement of Socialism. Our significance also comes in rooting these ideas in the hearts and minds of the youth of our country. Like in Cuba, we need to enter and openly fight the battle of ideas and take the side of the working class.
 * 5. YCL as an instrument in the struggle for the Battle of Ideas.**

How do these ideas shape our society and what are they? In the past, the struggle that we have been engaged into was for the liberation of Africans and blacks from economic and political bondage, is this still the case. People refer to the SACP and its vision as outdated, is this the case or is it merely the dominance of a particular set of ideas. People refer to socialism as having failed and that the Party is caught up in a ‘time-warp’, is this the case? What case are we making for socialism and ultimately, communism as the YCL? To what extent to we combat the idea of what it means and the values of being members of an organisations that fights for this ideals? To what extent do we influence the thinking in society, in the ANCYL, Sasco and Cosas and ultimately in the ANC, Cosatu and the SACP on what kind of cadre do we need?

There is an emerging idea amongst young people on what it means to live, with the high culture of consumerism dominating this culture. We need to, as said before, enter and openly fight the Battle of Ideas and make a youthful case for socialism and communism.

Linked to the question of the battle of ideas and the YCL cadre, we need to build a youthful, vibrant, active, mass-based and campaigning organisation. Unlike with the SACP, we cannot afford to use only traditional forms of engagement if the YCL is to become what we envisage. As some comrades argue, and we agree with them, we are not creating a ‘baby-SACP’. We should aim at combining the building of a YCL cadre, the battle of ideas, the building of the organisation with distinct but integrated building of a campaigning YCL. There is an impression out there that we can crudely build the YCL without linking our work to practical work on campaigns.
 * 6. Building a Campaigning and Mass-Based YCL.**

There are in no clear account on what branches and districts are doing in terms of the three key campaigns that we are engaged into. There is some sophistry mode that has befallen our structures, with provinces also not accounting on the extent to which they are co-ordinating campaigns work. An email from one of the members of the YCL exposes the nature and character of what a YCL branch has been since it was launched and what we are dealing with.

“…but u know mos (sic) the lives of the youth are up and down we like things that moves fast and enjoy parties and stuff like that, but anyway this is the secretary of the Matthew Goniwe branch… Iknow (sic) u have been wondering what has happened to the branch whether (sic) it is still active or no (sic), well there has been hiccups on the way, the youth lost interest and they all had different reasons for that…

“…But rest assured coz once they get their membership cards they will be back (sic) I am working on it that is a promise, I am trying my level best to get them back to the org. again, U know the youth needs something that is youthlike (sic) they don't want to be bored by meetings all the time, so we need to come up with strtegies (sic) that will capture their attention and interest, that is the only way they wil be back…”

This gives the impression of what kind of YCL we are not building and what kind we need to build. We are in a period of rebuilding a strong organisation that was not in existence for a long time, and thus, through experimenting new programmes we will be able to come closer, and ultimately become what the youth of the country want from the YCL.


 * From: http://www.sacp.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=107**