‘Real student leaders are elected’

The ANC Youth League and Sasco have slammed “illegitimate” leaders of student protests.

Cape Town - The African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) on Sunday lambasted “illegitimate” leaders of student protests and unrest.

“We call them ‘Twitter leaders’ because they have a following on social media and then they think that constitutes a constituency,” Sasco president Thabo Moloja told journalists in Cape Town.

Speaking after a meeting between Sasco - the country’s dominant student body - and the ANCYL, Moloja said the only legitimate student leaders were those elected by the student body.

He was joined by Western Cape ANCYL chairman Muhammad Khalid Sayed, the ANCYL’s Dullah Omar region co-ordinator Unathi Tshotwana, and ANCYL national executive committee member Mika Mahlaule.

“The battle for free education; we (Sasco) will continue to lead it,” Moloja said.

Those who claimed leadership without the necessary elections and those who disrupted learning were countering the fight for free education. He called on students to defend - as diligently as they had for access to education - their right to register and study.

Tshotwana condemned the acts of a “third force”, or “white supremacists and white imperialists”. He claimed such elements were funding students and encouraging them to march on, disrupt, and destroy universities.

Initially referring to them as a “third force”, Tshotwana then clarified his statement.

“It is the white imperialist of course,” he said. “They are very happy when they see disruption, but we are letting the law take its course.”

Tshotwana said although under the guise of free education, this was part of a larger racist campaign against the ANC government.

ANA