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The DA Youth is highly concerned that the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) has been awarded an appropriation of R1.22 billion over the next three years.

The National Youth Development Agency has been nothing more than an ANC Youth League exercise in cadre deployment and wasteful expenditure since its inception on
16 June 2009. Its ANC-dominated executive earns a combined income of more than R11 million a year, with Steven Ngubeni, NYDA CEO and ANC YL Secretary General, earning more than a cabinet minister, at R1.8 million per year.

The NYDA was recently responsible for wasting R100 million on the World Festival of Youth and Students – an ANC Youth League event which ended up being a week of partying and drinking for radical youth organisations from around the world.

The DA Youth has called repeatedly for the NYDA to be disbanded and the budget redirected to projects that will have a real impact on youth development, such as a zero-rating of VAT on textbooks.

If the NYDA was making any notable progress on the youth development crisis, this R1.22 billion budget would be welcomed and justifiable; however, in light of the fact that the organisation has met just 23 of its 68 targets over the last financial year – that’s a 33% success rate – it seems highly likely that this budget will turn into yet another exercise in gross financial wastage while millions of young South Africans remain jobless and skill-less.