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The report in today's City Press confirms our long held view that the World Youth festival organised by the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) was nothing but an ANC Youth League (ANCYL) sponsored jamboree designed to benefit ANCYL-aligned tendepreneurs. The festival achieved nothing for the ordinary young person of South Africa.

It also confirms that the NYDA in its current form is nothing but a tool to be used by the ANCYL to dispatch tenders to its members and backers. An agency that is tasked with advancing youth development should be beyond political influences and should focus its energies on assisting the multitudes of unemployed young South Africans.

The DA Youth has repeatedly implored the President to intervene and disband this farcical organisation, and for its budget to be directed to meaningful and tangible youth development programmes, like the introduction of a youth wage subsidy or the scrapping of VAT on books.

It is clear that the current leadership of the NYDA has failed to deliver on its mandate, and have instead focused their energies on satisfying their political masters. For the NYDA to work, new leadership that is not aligned to any youth political formation is needed. Until this agency is de-politicised, it will simply continue to deny our youth an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty and into a better future.