In the political report to the ANC Youth League 1st National General Council in August 2010, the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema said: "We should appreciate and get used to the idea that all major political, social and economic changes (revolutions) are activities of the youth. If for once we believe that the older generation will just accede to our demands and make radical changes, then we are misled. In our case, we understand that as working class youth, we carry the responsibility to reshape history and society for the better.

Malema made these remarks and further illustrated through many great leaders who contributed to change in their youth across the world. These include Che Guevara, Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro and many great others. These leaders and the generations they led made most impact in their youth and massively contributed to fundamental change in their societies. This is due, amongst other things, to the reality that they were armed with progressive revolutionary theory, which they did not apply dogmatically in their situations.

In opening the World Festival of Youth and Students as President of the National Preparatory Committee, Julius Malema, said: "The most remarkable and consistent feature of the struggles of the youth is fearlessness and ability to confront the enemy at any given moment∑" Malema further said: "As youth of the world we should stand up and say no to imperialist domination and repression, because the most brutal form of subjugation in our time is economic subjugation."

This was a clarion call to young people of the world that they are their own liberators and should rise up to appreciate this reality. The political developments that led to the toppling of despotic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt bear testimony that the youth are the most reliable carriers of revolutions across the world.

In South Africa, the youth movement is undeniably at the forefront of radical changes in the economy and providing the clearest revolutionary path on what is to be done. In revolutionary theory, the revolutionary paths are first determined by the working class' seizure of mass power, then political power, then the state and as a final decisive move, capturing the economy to democratically control and equitably distribute for the people to live sustainable.

The question we should ask is whether the recent political developments in Egypt and Tunisia go against the presuppositions of working class' seizure of political power whenever material conditions are ripe for a revolution to happen? Are working class movements and their vanguards (mainly Communist Parties) at the forefront of great revolutions?

The recent past history points to the reality that such is not the case. When the ready to fight and militant combatants of the Cuban revolutions began providing military assistance to revolutionary liberation movements in Latin America, it was the Communist Parties of those countries that always cautioned against such actions, and somewhat undermined the essence of what revolutions are all about.

The Great October Socialist Revolution had to happen after the Bolshevik/Menshevik split of the Russian Social Democratic Party (earlier Communist Parties were referred to as Social Democratic parties). The Cuban revolution itself was a youth led liberation movement (i.e. 26th of July Movement), which subsequently mutated into a Communist Party, whilst the original Communist Party of Cuba was sceptical of the revolutionary path chosen by the youth of 26th of July Movement.

The ANC Youth League's recent visit to Venezuela made us to discover that whilst the Communist Party of Venezuela is part of the revolution led by Hugo Chavez's United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish: Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela [PSUV]), ii is however almost destructively critical of most of the revolutionary paths taken by the PSUV and is often associated with factional battles that can negatively undermine the revolution in Latin America.

These are but some of the central questions we should inquisitively look into, particularly as it relates to the character of politics of the Communist Party in South Africa. With massive and commendable contributions to the struggles for national liberation, the post political liberation SACP seems to have lost its ideological steadfastness and is very inconsistent.

In 1996, when GEAR was adopted, the SACP official statement on the 14th of June 1996 said: "The South African Communist Party welcomes the government's Growth, Employment and Redistribution Macro-Economic Policy. We fully back the objectives of this macro-economic strategy and note, in particular, the following key features: Contrary to certain attempts to use the macro-economic debate to shift government away from its electoral mandate, the strategy announced today firmly and explicitly situates itself as a framework for the RDP."

The SACP's responses to the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa and more recently, the New Growth Path smacks of the same neo-liberal sentiments that have come to define the SACP. These views we express because the ideas of fundamental social and economic revolution in a politically liberated South Africa should to some extent informed and inspired by revolutionary theory, and it's currently not the case.

The youth component of what is supposed to be a revolutionary Vanguard of the working class in South Africa is nowhere near being revolutionary, because it is not ideologically and politically autonomous. As argued elsewhere, autonomy is elementary to the successes and extent of influence a youth movement can impact in a revolution.

This therefore calls on the progressive youth movement in close working relations with organised workers, under the leadership of the ANC Youth League, armed with progressive revolutionary theory to intensify the struggles for economic freedom in our lifetime. This entails amongst other things that the Youth Movement should be ideologically steadfast, consistent and fearless in the struggles to emancipate the black majority and Africans in particular.

As expected, the neo-liberal elements that define themselves as Left will be sceptical of radical and militant struggles to change property relations in South Africa. Typically, all sorts of conspiracies and lies will be spread to undermine the integrity of youth leadership and activists at the forefront of the revolution.

These observations do not in any way rebut the revolutionary theory's non-dogmatic guidance that the Vanguard of the working class should lead society towards seizure of political power, the state and economy. It is instead an observation that revolutionary youth armed with revolutionary theory are the best carriers of a revolution, because they have nothing to loose and everything to gain.

Working class youth should stop at nothing in the struggles to provide ideological and political leadership to the struggles for total economic and social emancipation. The organisational leadership of all these battles should be left to the African National Congress, which is the most dynamic leader of the National Liberation Movement, with innate capacity to adjust to revolutionary moments and at all times rise to the occasion.