Peter Mokaba made an indelible mark on the country’s political history and culture.
It has been 22 years since the firebrand ANC Youth League president with a penchant for courting controversy died. Yet he continues to cast a long shadow over politics — especially youth politics.
Like scores of others in his generation, Mokaba cut his teeth in politics during the 1976 student uprisings. Although he was not in Soweto, the uprising and the police’s brutal reaction affected him so much that he became an activist, leading school boycotts in his area.
As a result he spent stints in detention under the Terrorism Act in 1977 and again in 1982. In the early 1980s as a student at the University of the North, at the time regarded as the citadel of the resistance movement, Mokaba was recruited into uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s military wing.
A few years later, he was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island for his MK activities. By 1984 his sentence had been suspended — which later became a source of gossip relating to malicious claims of “selling-out” — which allowed him to take up a role as one of the activists mobilising public support for the United Democratic Front and related organisations.
By the end of 1987, he had acquired the status of a national leader due to his election as the president of the then powerful and influential South African Youth Congress (Sayco) — which would later be dissolved to make way for the re-establishment of the ANC Youth League in 1990.
Clearly many other leaders in the party appreciated the way Mokaba and others, through their militancy, kept the youth mobilised as a political force for the ANC and its allies
It was during his time as Sayco and youth league leaders that Mokaba gained the reputation of a firebrand who often shot from the hip.
In the early 1990s, the heyday of mass political rallies, the youth would flock to sports grounds specifically to hear him speak, even when the main speakers were such luminaries as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu or Ray Mhlaba.
He would not disappoint, peppering his speeches with provocative statements that led the militant youth — weary of Mandela’s negotiations with the Nats — to believe a revolutionary uprising was just around the corner.
“We will demolish the hostels brick by brick,” he’d say to jubilant youths in Thokoza, Katlehong and other townships that were ravaged by violence perpetrated by apartheid police-backed hostel dwellers.
Although he certainly did not invent it, Mokaba popularised the “Kill the boer, kill the farmer” chant that has been the source of much controversy for more than three decades.
For all of this he will get into a lot of trouble with Mandela. Those who worked with him at Shell House, the ANC’s then headquarters, tell of how he would sometimes avoid using the lifts for fear of bumping into Madiba and being scolded for reckless political statements that jeopardised negotiations.
But clearly many other leaders in the party appreciated the way Mokaba and others, through their militancy, kept the youth mobilised as a political force for the ANC and its allies. His popularity and influence grew among both the rank-and-file youth and the party’s political elite. By the mid-1990s, at the start of Mandela’s tenure as president, Mokaba was using this power and influence to turn the ANCYL into a kingmaker within the ANC, and therefore the country.
He and the league were the first to publicly tout Thabo Mbeki as Mandela’s successor. They got their way in 1997 when Mbeki was elected unopposed as ANC president — a move that paved the way for him to become the country’s president in 1999.
Since that success, every other ANCYL president has sought to emulate Mokaba. With the exception of Lulu Johnson and, perhaps, Malusi Gigaba, every youth league president has tried to fashion himself as some kind of a rebellious firebrand ready to be used as an attack dog for any ANC faction that is in power or is seeking to acquire power.
Think of Fikile Mbalula’s youth league in the run-up to the Polokwane conference, where Jacob Zuma ascended to the presidency.
Remember how Mbalula’s successor Julius Malema immediately became Zuma’s No 1 enforcer after being elected — even publicly vowing to “kill for Zuma”?
He changed his mind later, throwing in his lot with those involved in the failed bid to replace Zuma with his then deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. For that, and many other reasons, Malema found himself outside of the ANC and had to set up his own political stall in the form of the EFF.
His successors in the youth league have continued along a similar path. Collen Maine spent much of his tenure defending Zuma and his controversial Gupta friends while his successor, Collen Malatji, seems bent on using the position to clear the path for his preferred candidate for next ANC president — most probably Mbalula.
In all of this, there is little focus on pressing issues affecting the country’s youth. When unemployment and similar issues are raised, this is done in a manner aimed at advancing the interests of a particular ANC faction.
The most outrageous and polarising language is used, presumably under the mistaken belief that if such tricks helped Mokaba to be popular and influential back in the 1990s, they will still work now.
This would not be much of a problem if it was merely limited to the ANCYL as it is highly possible that the league, and possibly its mother body, will, over the next 10 years not have anything like the clout they have had over the past 30. But the problem is that this style of politics appears to be spilling over to youth formations outside the Congress tradition and therefore threatens to hold South Africa hostage far beyond the era of ANC dominance.
Mokaba was a man of his time. He is no answer to the political questions of today.
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