Today marked one year since the election of the 11th Provincial Executive Committee of the ANC Youth League in the Free State on 12 February 2025. In the life of a liberation movement, a year is a short passage of time. In the life of an organisation in crisis, it is decisive.
This reflection does not substitute for the formal accounting that will be undertaken at Provincial Congress. It is a political assessment of the first year of leadership, the conditions we confronted, and the concrete direction we imposed upon the organisation. The central fact is this: the ANC Youth League in the Free State is more coherent, more disciplined, more intellectually grounded, and more interventionist than it was twelve months ago.
We inherited an organisation weakened by fragmentation, declining ideological depth, uneven discipline, and eroded confidence in constitutional authority. Structures functioned inconsistently. Branches were uneven in vitality. Political education had receded into occasional rhetoric. Internal contestation had displaced outward intervention.
Simultaneously, the socioeconomic conditions of the province had deteriorated to intolerable levels. Youth unemployment exceeded sixty percent. More than 442 000 young people were not in employment, education, or training. Over 11 000 graduates were unemployed. Economic growth stagnated below one percent. Infrastructure grants were under spent while communities endured collapsing water systems, deteriorating sanitation, impassable roads, and shrinking economic opportunity.
The Youth League confronted a dual responsibility: organisational reconstruction and economic intervention. We resolved that these tasks were inseparable.
On 30 June 2025, the ANC Youth League led a Provincial Youth March to the Office of the Premier. This was a deliberate act of mass political mobilisation, anchored in structured analysis and a comprehensive economic programme. We advanced a clear position: youth unemployment in the Free State constitutes a structural emergency demanding decisive state intervention.
We placed forward a detailed programme of action.
We called for the redirection of no less than R3 billion toward labour intensive infrastructure, youth cooperatives, and employment linked skills development. We advanced the establishment of a coordinated public employment authority with a defined target of creating 150 000 youth jobs by 2027. We proposed a multi billion rand industrialisation initiative focused on agro processing, manufacturing, and regional reconstruction in Botshabelo, QwaQwa, and Sasolburg. We demanded that at least 40 percent of provincial procurement be allocated to youth owned enterprises, supported by transparent reporting and measurable targets. We called for income support mechanisms for unemployed youth as an instrument of economic stabilisation and dignity.
These were not abstract proposals. They were fiscally grounded and institutionally implementable. To underscore readiness and seriousness, we submitted 30 000 CVs of unemployed youth from across all five regions of the province. We transformed the discourse from lamentation to organised capacity.
Beyond mobilisation, the PEC intervened directly in the architecture of governance. We asserted that youth development must be a central function of provincial administration. It cannot remain peripheral or confined to a single department.
We advanced the establishment of youth development directorates across all provincial departments, beginning with the Office of the Premier, to embed youth priorities in planning, budgeting, and procurement. We called for the institutionalisation of a Youth Advisory Panel with defined authority and direct access to executive decision making. We proposed the creation of a R1 billion Youth Development Fund with explicit redistributive orientation, prioritising young women, rural youth, and those structurally excluded from capital and markets.
We insisted that procurement set asides be treated as instruments of redistribution rather than procedural compliance. Public expenditure must be consciously directed toward youth enterprises, with transparent monitoring and political oversight.
In September 2025, the Provincial General Council convened in Koffiefontein marked a decisive ideological consolidation of this direction . The Declaration adopted there articulated an unapologetic programme of industrialisation, beneficiation, expansion of manufacturing capacity, redefinition of monetary policy to include employment, mobilisation of idle public resources for development, introduction of a universal income grant, and progressive taxation to confront extreme wealth concentration.
The PGC did not merely pass resolutions. It restored ideological seriousness. It reaffirmed that economic transformation is not an adjunct to political liberation but its material foundation. It re established the language of state intervention, redistribution, and productive reconstruction within the Youth League.
Internally, the PEC reasserted constitutional authority. Meetings regained regularity and substance. Communication across regions improved. Decisions of structures are implemented with greater consistency. Political education has been revived as a continuous and structured programme. Branch stabilisation is being pursued methodically, recognising that provincial strength is inseparable from grassroots vitality.
Discipline is applied with greater consistency. Accountability is no longer negotiable. Leadership is treated as collective responsibility rather than personal entitlement.
The qualitative shift is evident.
The ANC Youth League in the Free State now intervenes directly in economic discourse. It has articulated a coherent youth centred development agenda. It has re established structured engagement with provincial leadership. It has reconnected organisational work with the material struggles of unemployed youth, informal traders, rural communities, and graduates excluded from the labour market.
This does not mean that the crisis has been resolved. Youth unemployment remains devastating. Economic stagnation persists. Structural constraints endure. But the organisation is no longer adrift. It has direction. It has programme. It has coherence.
The organisation we inherited was uncertain and internally preoccupied. The organisation we lead today is outward facing, politically sharper, and organisationally firmer. It has marched. It has formulated policy. It has adopted binding resolutions. It has demanded institutional restructuring. It has re positioned itself as a serious political actor within the province.
One year is not a culmination. It is a foundation.
As Provincial Congress approaches, delegates will undertake a comprehensive evaluation of our stewardship. That is their constitutional right and duty. What can already be stated with clarity is that the 11th PEC has re established seriousness, restored ideological confidence, and placed the economic exclusion of youth at the centre of provincial political discourse.
The path ahead requires deeper consolidation, broader mobilisation, and firmer intervention. But the direction has been set. The Youth League in the Free State is no longer defined by drift. It is defined by conscious political movement.
In the Final Analysis
The structural contradictions of the provincial economy remain. Youth unemployment remains above 60 percent. Growth is insufficient to absorb labour. The reserve army of labour persists. These realities confront us without illusion.
What has changed is the internal condition of the movement.
The organisation is beginning to recover. Recovery does not mean the absence of weaknesses. It means that decay has been halted and reversal has begun. Discipline is being restored. Constitutional authority is being respected. Leadership is increasingly understood as responsibility, not entitlement.
We are beginning to reorient comrades around the twin tasks of the ANC Youth League.
The first task is to mobilise and rally the youth behind the banner and vision of the African National Congress. This requires ideological clarity, disciplined organisation, and sustained political education. It means building branches that are active in communities, embedding comrades among young people, and ensuring that the youth see the ANC not as a distant institution but as the political instrument of their liberation.
The second task is to champion the general interests and aspirations of the youth. This demands concrete intervention in the material conditions of young people: unemployment, access to land, education, industrial development, and economic inclusion. It requires policy engagement, oversight, organised campaigns, and a relentless focus on shifting the balance of forces in favour of the youth majority. Advocacy must translate into programme and measurable impact.
By that measure, the ANC Youth League in the Free State is stronger than it was twelve months ago. The organisation is recovering. Comrades are being reoriented around its historic mission.
The struggle continues,
Aluta Continua.
Sizwe Alhajra Zingitwa is a PEC member of the ANC Youth League Free State but writes in his personal capacity.
