The ANC youth league and the politicization of race

Bibliographic Data

ID4481597
AuthorsDeborah Posel (University of Cape Town, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume115
Issue1
Pages58-76
Publication date2013-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513612470534
OpenAlexW2028709851
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited15

One of the most striking features of the South African polity, as the 20th anniversary of democratization draws closer, is the intensity of public arguments about race that show no signs of abating any time soon. In the midst of worsening socio-economic inequality, it's the economic question - of the terms of access to wealth, status and economic power, and of how to erase the residues of apartheid's economic dispossession - that dominates these arguments. In recent years, the ANC Youth League - a renewal of the Youth League originally created in 1944 and then banned in 1960 - effectively positioned itself at the forefront of this politicization of race. I argue in this essay that from 1994 to early 2012, the contemporary Youth League retained its predecessor's political persona of precocious provocateur, particularly on matters of race - but differently styled, and deployed to different political ends in the new conjuncture. The repertoire of the Youth League during this period was shaped by a clientelist politics, informed by a version of freedom as a freedom to consume, and the concomitant spectacles of conspicuous consumption that infused the iconography of the 'new' South Africa. These tendencies were most dramatically illustrated during Julius Malema's controversial tenure as Youth League president. Largely disconnected from discursive, deliberative notions of the political, the Youth League's version of politics became an amalgamation of angry street protest, patronage, and lavish partying, which produced a racialized iconography of being well-heeled and down-trodden in a seamless narrative of black solidarity

League · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Solidarity · African cultural and philosophical studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · Law · South African History and Culture

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