Jeugkrag (meaning "Youth Power" and also known as ''Youth for South Africa'') was a short-lived

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

n youth group, surreptitiously funded by the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

government's department of Military Intelligence in an operation known as Project Essay. Led by Marthinus van Schalkwyk (who, ironically, is now a member of the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

) it operated exclusively on Afrikaans university campuses and sought to influence the political views of Afrikaans-speaking students. Van Schalkwyk was the national chairman. He was supported between 1987 and July 1988 by Cedric de Coning who was both Director of Fund Raising and Publicity Secretary. Putatively aimed at bringing together youth from different ethnic and ideological backgrounds, Jeugkrag was a transparent effort to supplant the process of youth dialogue originally started by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), an

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

founded at the end of 1986 by the liberal ex-parliamentarians Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine with funding from donors such as the Open Society Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Slabbert and Boraine, who had decamped in frustration from the

tricameral parliament The Tricameral Parliament, officially the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, was the legislature of South Africa between 1984 and 1994, established by the South African Constitution of 1983, which gave a limited political voice to ...

, were part of the white group that held ground breaking discussions with ANC delegates at the historical Dakar meeting. They were vilified by PW Botha who called them ‘political terrorists’.

Peter Mokaba Peter Mokaba, OLG (7 January 1959 – 9 June 2002) was a member of the South African parliament, deputy minister in the government of Nelson Mandela and president of the South African governing party's youth wing, the ANC Youth League. The P ...

, an

ANC The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

leader that Jeugkrag had engaged, would later comment: "At the time although we knew that Jeugkrag was not an independent organization, but part of the heart and soul of the National Party, it was our policy to discuss matters with both progressive and reactionary organizations." In 1990 en route to a meeting in

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalaha ...

, a 12-person Jeugkrag delegation was detained by police at the Monomotapa Hotel in

Harare Harare (; formerly Salisbury ) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 940 km2 (371 mi2) and a population of 2.12 million in the 2012 census and an estimated 3.12 million in its metropolitan ...

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

. They were questioned about a meeting that they had attended with members of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), a marginal political group opposed to Robert Mugabe's government. The delegation consisted exclusively of representatives from Afrikaans-language universities including the

Rand Afrikaans University The Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) was a prominent South African institution of higher education and research that served the greater Johannesburg area and surroundings from 1967 to 2004. It has since merged with the Technikon Witwatersrand ...

Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

, and the

University of Pretoria The University of Pretoria ( af, Universiteit van Pretoria, nso, Yunibesithi ya Pretoria) is a multi-campus public research university in Pretoria, the administrative and de facto capital of South Africa. The university was established in 1908 ...

. The University of Pretoria office was headed up by Louis du Plooy until the organisation was disbanded in 1991. The liaison officer was Cleoné Bakker.

References

{{Political history of South Africa , state=expanded Afrikaner organizations Apartheid in South Africa Apartheid government Defunct civic and political organisations in South Africa Organisations associated with apartheid