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ANC leaders 'need education'

TAKING SIDES: ANC Youth League general secretary Vuyiswa Tulelo says the league will stand by its leader Julius Malema. Pic: Tyrone Arthur. 16/09/2010. © Business Day.
TAKING SIDES: ANC Youth League general secretary Vuyiswa Tulelo says the league will stand by its leader Julius Malema. Pic: Tyrone Arthur. 16/09/2010. © Business Day.

The ANC Youth League has resolved to educate President Jacob Zuma, the ANC leadership and its members about the meaning of the league's autonomous status within the ruling party.

Youth League general secretary Vuyiswa Tulelo said the league wanted to clarify the meaning of its status in the ANC to avoid any efforts to silence it in the future.

"We will embark on a mass political education campaign to educate the youth league and ANC leaders," Tulelo said.

She said the league felt strongly that some processes in the Malema hearing bordered on threatening the autonomy of the league within the ANC.

"Indeed we will have to engage the ANC on issues of processes and it is our responsibility to keep the ANC to its own constitution."

Tulelo said the league's executive, which met at Ingwenya Country Escape in Muldersdrift yesterday, felt that Malema's detractors were changing procedures.

Though the league was not rejecting the outcome of the Malema hearing, it said it would present its objections to the ANC NEC today with a view to forcing a U-turn on the outcome.

Insiders said the league and Malema enjoyed the support and sympathy of most of the ANC's 86-member national executive committee members.

The league was particularly disturbed by a decision of the hearing to impose a threat that it would suspend Malema for two years if he were to be found guilty of sowing seeds of division within the party.

The league's NEC has also resolved to stand firm on its support for Malema saying he should not have been charged as an individual as he was representing the league.

Tulelo said the entire executive of the youth league would attend anger management lessons, attend an ANC political school and encourage its members to contribute to paying off the R10000 fine meted out to Malema.

The league has also made no indication that it will compel its president to make a public apology to Zuma and the nation as recommended by the disciplinary committee.

Tulelo said Malema would instead apologise to Zuma and the ANC during today's meeting of the party's NEC

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