Jeugkrag

Part of a series on
Apartheid
Events 1948 general election Coloured vote constitutional crisis 1956 Treason Trial Sharpeville massacre Rivonia Trial Soweto uprising Church Street, Pretoria bombing Vaal uprising Trojan Horse Incident Khotso House bombing Cape Town peace march CODESA Assassination of Chris Hani Saint James Church massacre 1994 Bophuthatswana crisis Shell House massacre
Organisations ANC APLA IFP AWB BBB Black Sash CCB Conservative Party DP ECC FOSATU PP RP PFP HNP MK PAC UDF Broederbond National Party COSATU Security Branch SACC SADF SAIC SAMA SAP SACP State Security Council
People Vernon Berrangé P. W. Botha Steve Biko Mangosuthu Buthelezi F. W. de Klerk Ruth First Bram Fischer Arthur Goldreich Chris Hani Bantu Holomisa Joel Joffe Ahmed Kathrada Albert Luthuli Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Mac Maharaj D. F. Malan Nelson Mandela Govan Mbeki Thabo Mbeki Raymond Mhlaba Benjamin Moloise Albertina Sisulu Walter Sisulu J. G. Strijdom Joe Slovo Robert Sobukwe Helen Suzman Adelaide Tambo Oliver Tambo Eugène Terre'Blanche Desmond Tutu H. F. Verwoerd B. J. Vorster Jacob Zuma
Places Bantustan District Six Robben Island Sophiatown South-West Africa Soweto Sun City Vlakplaas
Related topics Afrikaner nationalism Apartheid in popular culture Apartheid legislation Cape Qualified Franchise Disinvestment campaign Freedom Charter Internal resistance to apartheid Kairos Document Music in the movement against apartheid Nostalgia for apartheid Project Coast Sullivan Principles
Category
v t e

Jeugkrag (meaning "Youth Power"), also known as Youth for South Africa, was a short-lived South African youth group in the late 1980s. It was surreptitiously funded by the apartheid government's Department of Military Intelligence in an operation known as Project Essay. Led by Marthinus van Schalkwyk (later a member of the African National Congress) it operated exclusively on Afrikaans university campuses and sought to influence the political views of Afrikaans-speaking students.^[1][2][3]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Putatively aimed at bringing together youth from different ethnic and ideological backgrounds,^[4] 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 founded at the end of 1986 by the liberal ex-parliamentarians Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine^[5] with funding from donors such as the Open Society Foundation^[6] and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).^[7] Slabbert and Boraine, who had decamped in frustration from the tricameral parliament,^[8] were part of the white group that held groundbreaking discussions with ANC delegates at the historic Dakar meeting in 1987.^[9]

The group was vilified by PW Botha, who called them "political terrorists".^[10] Peter Mokaba, an ANC 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."^[11]

In 1990 en route to a meeting in Botswana, a 12-person Jeugkrag delegation was detained by police at the Monomotapa Hotel in Harare, Zimbabwe. 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.^[12] The delegation consisted exclusively of representatives from Afrikaans-language universities including the Rand Afrikaans University, Stellenbosch University, and the University of Pretoria.

The University of Pretoria office was headed by Louis du Plooy until the organisation was disbanded in 1991.^{[citation needed]} The liaison officer was Cleoné Bakker.^{[citation needed]}