ANCYL: Lower the NYDA bar, please

The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) has seemingly moved mountains to force Parliament to amend the criteria and academic requirements for individuals to serve in the multimillion-rand National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).

The league wants its deputy president, Dennis Moela, who does not possess a tertiary qualification, to be the next chairperson of the agency.

Moela, who was nominated by the ANCYL in earlier processes – despite not having the required academic qualifications – had been previously excluded from the short list, which angered the young lions.

Despite his exclusion, the league, at its national executive committee meeting in April, took a resolution that Parliament should restart the appointment process and lower the bar to ensure that Moela was somehow included on the agency’s board.

This week, Parliament adopted a motion to restart the process that was abandoned in May without any official explanation.

This was despite the fact that the term of the previous board had ended in March.

City Press can reveal that the new process has been drafted in such a way that it would no longer be a requirement for candidates to have a tertiary qualification to serve on the board.

ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told City Press that the decision to drop the requirement was based on the fact that it was not there before when the previous boards were appointed.

Mthembu said the criteria were not prescribed in law and would also have exposed Parliament to legal challenges.

Mthembu said proceeding with that requirement would have discriminated against the candidates who had served and had done well in the previous boards.

Mthembu denied suggestions that Parliament was pandering to the whims of the ANCYL, which had previously vowed to City Press that it would get its way.

“This has nothing to do with the ANCYL. It’s just that the law does not prescribe the requirement for academic qualifications.

“We then realised that if we continued with that requirement, we were opening the process to a legal challenge,” he said.

This is the fourth time Parliament has tried to recruit candidates for the NYDA board. The previous three processes were abandoned without an official explanation.

City Press understands that at issue is a requirement for candidates to possess at least a three-year degree or an equivalent and – to an extent – the internal factional politics of the ANCYL that seemed not to have candidates with marching requirements for the board.

The ANCYL’s secretary-general, Njabulo Nzuza, confirmed that the league’s national executive wanted Moela to serve on the board.

He said the league would nominate someone when the time came.

“We are quite happy that the process is starting afresh because of the issues that we raised. The process must be open so that all young people can participate,” said Nzuza.

This week, the National Assembly adopted a motion by Mthembu to re-establish the ad hoc joint committee and that the committee report back to the House by December 7.