In this part of my open letter to ANC Youth League members, I get the formalities out of the way: Why am I offering you free advice and who am I, anyway? (To comment on the letter, please go to its first part.)
Zimbabwe Dollars before the currency was effectively abandoned in April 2009.
I believe South Africans are at this moment faced with choices which will determine our quality of life for decades into the future. And some of the possible outcomes are pretty grim. Think back to Cambodia, Beirut, Bosnia. Think Somalia now.
Hell, think Swaziland, just across the border, where the people are being told what to do by a real-life absolute monarch and his coterie of fellow thieves. (“Here’s a new law for you – you’re not allowed to take pictures of my cars,” LOL.)
Think Zimbabwe, also right across the border, where things got to a stage where what probably amounts to over a quarter of the population left the country and continue to live in exile despite the hardships which that entails.
Indeed, the abyss yawning next to the narrow, winding path of our progress as a country is a pretty deep one, and as we’re all more or less tied together by a single national thread, you’ll understand that I’m not too chuffed when I see YL members break-dancing on the precipice.
So compared to the prospect of dondering down the abyss with the rest of you’s for what look like truly ridiculous reasons to me, writing a letter seems like a small effort to make, even if it reaches only a few YL members with their hearts in what I consider to be the right place.
But my guess as that, despite what I see as the crazy goings-on over at the YL since at least its Kebble-ist phase, most YL members in fact do have their hearts in the right place – it’s just that the League has been hijacked by some very smooth operators. In Parts 4 and 5 of the letter I return to what I see as the web of deceit which has been spun around you.
Who the hell is CatsBell?
You can look at the About section of this blog for background, but I’m sure what you want to know is what my political colours are, so here they are: Disaffected former ANC activist/supporter/member/voter (and particularly alarmed by what has become of the ANCYL), left-leaning (and please don’t ask me what I mean by that – we’re already at 7 parts for the letter), democrat, occasional contributor to online news discussions (under the CatsBell name).
I know it doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but there’s more. I just can’t think what it is right now. 🙂
I don’t hold any government or party political position – currently I’m in fact not even a member of a political party – and nobody’s paying me to write this.
What you’re reading here is basically a news comment that is too long to post as a comment, OK?
Why not under my own name?
I’m submitting the letter in the name under which I comment online, rather than my own, for two reasons: First, unless it’s really necessary, I don’t feel like running the risk of being klapped by one (or more – heaven forbid!) of the people I may offend in it.
Second, regular readers of online news comments will already have a fairly good idea of the background to my positions on some of the issues addressed here, whereas my own name will, sadly, not ring much of a bell. 🙂
What’s in Part 3?
In the first part of the letter I mentioned that each YL member has been tarred with the same brush as the YL NEC. In the next part I’m going to outline the options I see open to YL members to get rid of the tar. But to choose the right option, you’d first have to decide whether the NDC ruling was fair or not, so that’s where I’ll begin.
CatsBell's Views on the News 