'Profound political retreat': Vavi criticises ANCYL’s call to declare youth unemployment a national disaster

South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has criticised the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) for calling for youth unemployment to be declared a national disaster. 

On Thursday, IOL reported that the ANCYL said millions of young South Africans are enduring a grim festive season defined not by celebration, but by joblessness, hunger, and widening economic exclusion.

In a statement, the league described the holiday period as a painful reminder of deepening inequality for a generation locked out of the economy.

“Youth unemployment remains the single greatest threat to social stability, dignity, and the future of our country,” the league said.

“With millions of young people unable to access work, education, or economic opportunities, Christmas arrives not as a season of hope, but as a painful reminder of broken promises and deepening inequality.”

The ANCYL warned that prolonged joblessness has fuelled dependency, mental distress, and a growing loss of purpose among the youth.

Against this backdrop, the league renewed its call on President Cyril Ramaphosa to declare youth unemployment a national disaster, arguing the crisis has reached catastrophic proportions.

It said such a declaration would unlock emergency powers to mobilise resources, fast-track interventions, cut red tape, and implement bold, youth-focused economic programmes at scale.

The league also called on all spheres of government to prioritise mass youth employment through industrialisation, skills development, localisation, expanded public employment programmes, and targeted support for youth-owned businesses.

However, on Friday, Vavi stated that the Youth League’s position represents a “profound political retreat.”

He noted that the ANCYL spokesperson Zama Khanyase insisted ANC economic policies were perfect and “progressive,” despite the worsening youth unemployment crisis.

When challenged on SAfm about why under such perfect policies, youth unemployment continues to rise, the spokesperson blamed “non-implementation” and the constraints of the Government of National Unity (GNU), rather than policy failure.

Vavi said this was “convenient” and fundamentally contradictory.

“To argue today that the crisis is a ‘disaster’ while simultaneously defending the very policies that produced it is an exercise in political contradiction. You cannot declare an emergency while protecting the cause,” he said. 

Reflecting on the ANCYL’s past, Vavi noted that during the era of Julius Malema’s NEC leadership, the Youth League’s analysis closely aligned with the demands of workers in COSATU and the unemployed.

At that time, the crisis of youth unemployment was explicitly linked to the ANC’s own economic framework, including fiscal austerity, tight monetary policy, neoliberal restructuring, and privatisation and market-led development, he said.

Vavi said the league then did not hide behind implementation excuses but named the policy architecture itself as the problem.

Vavi said this clarity has now been abandoned. He argued that the shift confirms a broader political reality: the historic left axis of youth and workers within the Tripartite Alliance has been “politically neutralised and absorbed.”

However, he stressed that resistance is growing outside the alliance. Vavi said the left axis outside the ANC is “organising and strengthening - rooted in working-class struggle, the unemployed, community movements, and independent trade unionism.” 

He said the future of youth and worker activism will not be built on defending “failed orthodoxies” but on breaking from them.

hope.ntanzi@iol.co.za

IOL Politics