Another member of the younger generation has generated more heat than light through controversial comments. Young Communist League secretary Buti Manamela published an article last week in the South African Communist Party’'s online journal Umsebenzi in which he teed off on Thabo Mbeki. The YCL, the SACP's functional equivalent of the ANC Youth League, effectively cast the blame for all of the country's ills directly on Mbeki's shoulders, arguing that Mbeki is responsible, among other things, for Jacob Zuma's troubles and for the emergence of the Congress of the People. That the country's highest court has pretty much absolved Mbeki of the political machinations against Mbeki that cost the former president his job and that directly fueled the establishment of COPE seems lost on the cadres of the YCL. Why let the evidence get in the way of a harangue, after all?
