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Paper short abstract:

This paper considers shifts of youth political legitimacy; where politics is often a navigation of ideology & employment. Increasingly, there is an ideological turn away from the present (ex)liberation party as wielder of state resources, & rather a rationalisation of a ‘purer politics of the past’.

Paper long abstract:

As the demographic of the powerful has shifted in South Africa, the terms of grassroots political legitimacy have become increasingly complex to navigate. Patronage, in particular, has come to play a major role in the influence and appeal of the African National Congress and its tripartheid affiliates.

This paper considers the shifts of political legitimacy in the face of patronage, particularly for young people; for whom politics is often a complex navigation of ideology versus basic employment. What is becoming increasingly evident, is an ideological turn away from the delegitimised ex-liberation party's current condition as hegemonic ruler and wielder of state resources, and rather an attempt at a historicized rationalisation of a purer politics set at period before their birth (and within a liberation or struggle frame)

Political 'ideas' therefore become divorced from current youth realities, not by practice but rather by time.

This paper departs from the deliberations of two young communist league activists in Khutsong, South Africa, whose political trajectories have shifted from that of grassroots, highly legitimised 'leaders of the people' in the four year long violent protests of Khutsong against the state; to self-proclaimed coopted employees of the ruling party. It is to political narraitves of the past that these activists have turned to attempt to re-legitimise their choices and clarify their ideological waverings. Specifically, this paper tracks the ways in which young people have taken to a kind of nostalgia and reimagining of the past to afford legitimacy to a very complex political present.