We hate to appear to be jumping on the bandwagon, but the ANC Youth League makes it impossible for us to ignore them.
We hate to appear to be jumping on the bandwagon, but the ANC Youth League makes it impossible for us to ignore them.
Unfortunately the kind of attention they generate is not always positive.
This is not the first time Sowetan has expressed misgivings about the tendency of the league, and particularly its president Julius Malema, to use the kind of language that is out of character with the accepted mores of our people.
Somehow the youngsters at Luthuli House seem to believe that our asking them to use decent language is the same as asking them to change their viewpoints.
It could be argued that the rest of society should not be bothered about their insolence because they embarrass the ANC with whatever they do.
The trouble with this type of thinking is that the ANCYL has, by association with the ANC and the party's dominance of the local political scene, been the barometer by which we measure our country's political future and its capacity to sustain democracy.
The ANC allowing the youth to act so clumsily might well cause further damage to the image of the party in the long term.
Right now this future looks extremely bleak. It is sad that the ANC seems helpless in the face of such unfortunate behaviour.