Staff Reporter
The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in the Free State province has come out guns blazing, dismissing the ongoing clampdown on senior party officials as a ploy by one faction of the party to fight internal battles.
The youth league said this following reports that a warrant of arrest had been issued against ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule for his alleged failure to exercise oversight relating to the Vrede dairy farm investigation.
In a statement issued late Tuesday night, the ANCYL said the arrests of top party officials have been carefully orchestrated to ensure everything happens in front of the media as a way of embarrassing those targeted.
“The ANCYL has observed over time a carefully choreographed programme of using the reactionary media and state organs to isolate certain leaders of the ANC, particularly the secretary-general of the ANC, Cde Ace Magashule,” read part of the statement.
“This programme has all the hallmarks of the period when a similar approach was used against the then deputy president of the ANC, Cde Jacob Zuma,” the statement added.
The ANCYL said it was aware of the carefully defined stages in implementing what they described as a nefarious plan.
It said the first phase is to use the “untransformed” and “counter-revolutionary” media to consistently tarnish the image of those targeted.
This, the youth league said, is a way of pushing a negative narrative to the public underpinned by falsehoods, character assassinations and manufactured allegations which will never stand a test of time in a competent court of law.
“The second phase is to conduct CIA kind of arrests where those targeted are paraded in the media as part of continuing with the peddling of a false narrative and firmly communicating a message of guilt in the court of public opinion,” the ANCYL said.
“This phase is used as part of associating the political ‘Big Fish’ with all of these arrests and already consolidate the narrative of his ‘guilt’ in the court of public opinion.
“In this case, the ‘Big Fish’ is the secretary-general of the ANC, Cde Ace Magashule.”
The party youths then issued a stern warning to the state organs saying they should serve the people and not allow themselves to be manipulated and get involved in factional battles in the ANC.
“We would like to warn all the organs of state, particularly the law-enforcement organs, to resist the temptation of being political tools and proxies of political battles in the ANC,” the ANCYL said.
“They should maintain their constitutionally enshrined role of doing their work without favour or prejudice.
“Furthermore, we wish to place it on record that those who seek to deliver the ANC to their masters who have already pre-ordered it through funding their political campaigns towards their election into political offices, we are watching them and they will never succeed.”
The youth league said the ultimate plan is to embarrass Magashule by concocting allegations and have a court case against him.
“This will be done for two major reasons, charge Cde Ace Magashule, ask him to step aside and ensure that the real stumbling block against the white monopoly capital cartel is sidelined,” the ANCYL said.
“This we shall never allow in our movement. We call on all the structures of the organisation to fight tooth and nail against the blatant usage of state organs against other comrades in furtherance of factional political battles, led by white monopoly proxies who have to act on the pre-order by their masters.”