Lobby group snubs Cyril, Nkosazana - push for a younger ANC president

A lobby group of former ANC Youth League leaders is to push for a younger leader to take over from President Jacob Zuma.

The group says it is clear that the ANC needs a leader who can take EFF leader Julius Malema and DA leader Mmusi Maimane head on.

Maimane and Malema are both under the age of 40, while candidates competing for Zuma's position - Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma - are both over the age of 60.

The group - which includes former ANCYL president Mlungisi "Lulu" Johnson, ex-ANCYL deputy president Ronald Lamola, former youth league leader and convenor of the initiative Mpho Tsedu, and former ANCYL Limpopo chairman Joshua Matlou - will launch its campaign in Johannesburg on Friday. The campaign has the blessings of ANC allies Cosatu and the SACP.

Tsedu told Sowetan yesterday that the initiative would be a platform for former "young lions" to engage on the future of the country. "We are not satisfied with what is happening in the country," Tsedu said.

"Everybody else has been speaking and we have not been speaking. It is us who brought the apartheid government down. We can't fail."

Tsedu said they were worried that the league's former president and now finance minister Malusi Gigaba was implicated in the state capture report. "If the ANC can't take him to task, we will engage him. He is our peer."

Johnson said: "We have presidents who are in their 30s, and Barack Obama was in his 40s [when he was elected president of the US]."