Africa-Press – South-Africa. The usually mundane annual debate on Youth Day in the National Assembly couldn’t escape the allegations against President Cyril Ramaphosa, with the EFF and ATM arguing that South Africa’s youth had no future with an alleged “money launderer” as the head of state.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly debated Youth Day under the theme “Promoting sustainable livelihoods and resilience of young people in South Africa for a better tomorrow”.
Opposition speakers were quick to point out the youth’s myriad challenges – unemployment, barriers to education and gender-based violence that plummet them into lives of poverty, hopelessness and substance abuse – and blame the ANC government for these circumstances.
The man who stole Ramaphosa’s millions
The ANC, however, preferred to look on the bright side.
“South Africa is a better place than it was in 1976, thanks to our forebears and the ANC government,” said ANC MP Sibusisu Kula, who opened the debate.
He claimed that young people today lived in a “prosperous society” but acknowledged that “more still needs to be done”.
While the ANC speakers lauded the generation of 1976, EFF MP Naledi Chirwa encouraged young people to draw inspiration from them – against the ANC government.
“All power, stolen moneys and the guns they use to murder those who fight the status quo will eventually mean absolutely nothing when confronted by the will and determination of young people,” she said.
Chirwa said it was by design that South African young people were poor.
“We are led by an ANC mafia who benefits when we are downtrodden, uneducated, poor, unemployed, raped, murdered, intoxicated and riddled with preventable illnesses,” she said.
ANC does not want to ‘interfere’ with investigations into ‘Rama-Phala Phala’
Chirwa said the ANC government didn’t remember the youth when they “looted R5 billion” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They don’t remember that we are youth when they take Bill Gates’s money and put it in their mattresses,” she said.
“But somehow, we must remember that they are elders when we push back against their corruption, greed and hunger for power.”
“As young people, we no longer have the liberty to give respect to criminals just because they are seventy years old. We respect elders with integrity, not gangsters.
“The youth of today should rise up with every chance they get, to show these gangsters, wherever they show their face, that they have truly messed with the wrong generation.”
She said:
Taking a similar tack was ATM leader Vuyolwethu Zungula, who said the youth didn’t have a future if the country doesn’t have a future.
“There is no future when so-called leaders of our country are money launderers, kidnap and torture people, evade paying taxes, violate immigration laws, are unethical leaders who hide millions of US dollars in their mattresses. The only people we know who hide such volumes of US dollars in cash are CIA agents and spies. The youth have no future when their country is run by CIA agents and spies,” he said.
He didn’t clarify how he came to know CIA agents and spies who hid cash in their mattresses.
Ramaphosa sticks to his guns on Mkhwebane’s suspension
Zungula said young people do not have a future when “those in power suspend those investigating them”, in an apparent reference to Ramaphosa suspending Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane on Thursday, a day after she announced that she would be investigating the allegations against him.
“Only dictators do that,” Zungula added.
“Young people must rise and reclaim our country from descending into dictatorship.”
“Parliament must safeguard the future of the country by fulfilling its constitutional mandate. Parliament must safeguard the future of this country by holding the executive accountable, especially for serious transgressions of the law,” Zungula said.
National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula declined the ATM’s request to impeach Ramaphosa, but News24 understands that the ATM would resubmit their application to include a substantive motion.
“Young people must reclaim this country from billionaires who have never invented anything,” said Zungula.
DA MP Alexandra Abrahams said: “The ruling party, the ANC, through a litany of bad policies, continue to strip away all opportunities, forcing young people into survival mode, robbing them of a joyful and carefree youth.
“We know many ANC members gave up their youth for our country, but why are we still giving up our youth 28 years later? What was the point of your struggle if we’re still paying the price?”
ANC MP Sthembile Hlongo said the issues affecting the youth required all young people to unite in fighting them.
“It does not need us to come in party caps to fight issues of the youth,” she said.
She claimed the ANC considered youth a force for change.
‘We are told to wait until we are pensioners’ – Ronald Lamola says ANC needs young leaders
Deputy Home Affairs Minister Njabulo Nzuza took a more combative stance against his party’s detractors.
“We must be cautious of the lumpenproletariat who makes revolutionary sounds to sway us from the truth because they are enemies of progress,” he said.
He claimed that the problems the youth faced were “in the main driven by a poor performing economy”.
“The economic reconstruction and recovery plan remains our most constructive weapon in resolving the economic challenges of our youth,” he said.
“It is a shame, chairperson, to see products of those who have benefitted in marginalising a black child stand here and say the ANC has failed. Chairperson, they never wanted the ANC to succeed and even today, they still do not wish to see it making progress.
“They are nothing but armchair critics who have nothing to offer except being enemies of progress.”
In conclusion, he said:
The EFF and ATM had taken to calling Ramaphosa a “money launderer” after former director-general at the State Security Agency and former commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services Arthur Fraser two weeks ago opened a kidnapping and money laundering case against Ramaphosa, Presidential Protection Unit head Major-General Wally Rhoode and Crime Intelligence members for allegedly concealing a burglary at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm in February 2020.
According to Fraser’s affidavit, Ramaphosa had at least $4 (about R62 million) in cash stashed in a couch at his game farm – and then played a part in a cover-up following an allegedly illegal investigation into the matter.
We want to hear your views on the news. Subscribe to News24 to be part of the conversation in the comments section of this article.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
