ANC ‘patronage vehicle’ – Mashaba tells Ramaphosa to dissolve NYDA

“It’s patronage vehicle and training ground for the ANC’s next generation of looters.”

That is how ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has described the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).

On Friday, Mashaba launched a campaign for the immediate dissolution of the agency.

“We demand that the president move with even faster speed than it took the ANC to dissolve the Scorpions in 2008 and dissolve the NYDA,” Mashaba said in a statement.

“Since its inception in 2009, the NYDA has written off almost half of its budget in unrecoverable loans which amount to R1.5 billion. An equivalent amount has been paid out in salaries for performance which is nothing short of atrocious.”

The agency, which was established primarily to tackle challenges faced by the youth, has been without a board since May 2020.

“There is no objective fact or statistic supporting the NYDA’s continued existence,” Mashaba said.

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Last year, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) sent a letter to presiding officers of Parliament about allegations that the shortlisting process for new board members at the agency was jeopardised by political patronage.

That was after the South African Youth Council (SAYC) had also complained against the MPs following allegations that the agency’s selection process was favouring the ANC national youth task team’s candidates.

Parliament last month announced that it had finally restarted the process for the appointment of the agency’s next board. There is also a process to amend the agency’s empowering legislation, the NYDA Act 54 of 2009.

“ActionSA’s position on both these processes is that neither will deliver the kinds of positive outcomes young people of South Africa desperately need, at least not whilst the agency exists as an independent juristic entity,” said Mashaba.

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