AP Mda an icon for the youth
The story about the life of our dear fallen hero, Ashby Solomzi Peter Mda, continues to be more intriguing in his death than perhaps it was when he was still alive.
I say so because AP Mda, as he was popularly known, lived a life of a servant who sacrificed and suffered for the peoples of Africa whom he was convinced were slaves in their native land and had to be uplifted economically and be empowered to safeguard their vital material and spiritual interests.
He firmly opposed colonial oppression and white supremacy.
Mda belongs to a generation which a lot is said and written about in our historical archives but his own name and the critical role he played in the 1940s and 1950s is seldom featured.
A teacher who ultimately graduated as a lawyer, he spent most of his life serving fellow Africans in the political arena.
Following Anton Lembede’s sudden death on July 29 1947, Mda was named acting president of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) until he was formally elected as its president in 1948.
Today, as get closer to the much-anticipated national congress of the ANCYL, the membership of the youth league and all those interested youths outside the league should be educated about this immortal being whose only purpose in life was to see a prosperous South Africa that would be thriving in the hands of natives.
The current leadership of the ANCYL should resist the temptation to perpetuate the delinquent sub-culture that has for some time defined the body-politic of the league’s affairs – a culture of being engaged in boisterous insults directed at the elderly while neglecting the core mission of the league.
In today’s context we also witness the sad reality of naïve members and supporters of the youth league being victims of patronage and political bullying from the “mother-body”.
As a result of all these, they are bound to dance to the tune of senior ANC members and are caught up in factional battles of the party while abandoning the objectives and missions of the youth league.
Mda, on the other hand, never lost sight of what he and his generation of ANCYL members envisioned.
Theirs was a leadership that commanded moral authority and inspired their generation behind a political vision he himself described as “African nationalism”.
The youth league of the 1940s and 1950s was an important foundation for youth politics in South Africa hence, before then, very little was said and written about the involvement of youths in the struggle against white supremacy.
What South Africa saw in the 1970s when student uprisings sprawled and in the 1980s during the United Democratic Front era was, in my view, a culmination of what Mda and his 1940s generation of youth leaguers had started.
Even in post-democracy, the youth league’s vigorous exertions in fighting for young people can be attributed to what Mda started in the 1940s.
These include programmes led by former ANCYL presidents such as the “Youth must learn” clarion call made Peter Mokaba, the “Vuk’uzenzele” programme by Malusi Gigaba, the “Uzoythola kanjani uhlel’ ekhoneni” call by Fikile Mbalula and the “Economic freedom in our lifetime” campaign by Julius Malema.
In a nutshell, what Mda started way back in the 1940s was bigger than himself or his peers.
The ANCYL is a giant that should stand the test of times and the youth of South Africa have every right to demand that the league gets its house in order otherwise we would all be doomed. Mda lived a life worth emulating and I choose to follow his path.
