South Africa: Why AfriForum Youth does not participate in the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students
By AfriForum Youth – AfriForum Youth today sent a letter to the President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), Mr Tiago Vieira, explaining why AfriForum Youth does not participate in the 17th Word Festival of Youth and Students, which is taking place in Pretoria, South Africa this year.
In the letter, Ernst Roets, National Chairperson of AfriForum Youth states:
“About 40% of our population lives in abject poverty and about 70% of the unemployed in this country are people below the age of 35. Because of this, only about 10% of our country can afford to pay the taxes needed to fund government spending and to make this country a
better place for all who live in it. Despite this, your festival is costing this country at least R69-million, of which R29-million was provided by Government from funds that were earmarked to uplift our country and another R40-million was provided by the National Lottery from funds that could also have been used to uplift the people of this country.”
Roets mentions that two weeks ago (on the very evening that the Potgieter family were brutally murdered in Lindley), he (Roets) participated in a debate with Mr Vieira and a spokesperson of the ANC Youth League, Magdalene Moonsamy. During the debate, both Vieira and Moonsamy refused to take a stand against the murder of farmers in South Africa and Zimbabwe, which is often committed under the guise of “anti-imperialism”.
Roets also explained that AfriForum Youth’s participation in the festival would amount to the encouragement of an already explosive situation in South Africa. “More than two thousand innocent farmers have been killed in South Africa by the so-called “anti-imperialists”; and since March 2010, when the President of the ANCYL, Julius Malema, started singing “shoot the Boers”, about 100 farmers have been murdered. All of this have taken place while the WFDY is singing and sipping champagne with the ANCYL.”
In addition, AfriForum Youth has requested the organisers of the festival to make a public statement to the effect that the incitement to violence against and the murder of white South Africans via songs and slogans must come to an immediate end.
