Johannesburg – The deal between the ANC and the IFP to cooperate in hung municipalities has caused consternation in both parties and threatens to weaken President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bid for a second term at the helm of the governing party.
Sunday World has established that some senior leaders in the ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee (PEC) feel Ramaphosa “sold” them to the IFP and that the 11th-hour agreement, which was a closely guarded secret, was designed to appease IFP president emeritus Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
It has now emerged that the ANC/IFP pact has deeply divided the provincial leadership, as the governing party prepares for its elective conference next year, during which KwaZulu-Natal would play a kingmaker role as the party’s biggest province.
At the heart of the discord, it is believed to be the non-negotiables advanced by IFP, who want ed the ANC to change its political posture on Buthelezi and accord him the same status enjoyed by former ANC leaders.
A PEC member said they had been prepared to go to opposition benches – especially in municipalities they lost control of in northern KwaZulu-Natal – instead of working with the IFP.
“Part of the deal has nothing to do with issues at the local government level. But the IFP is using this to appease Prince Buthelezi and rewrite history. He wants to be unduly given a legacy of a peacemaker on the right side of history. We can’t please one man at the expense of what is right and principled,” said an ANC PEC member not authorised to speak to the media.
The move is said to have amplified dissenting voices in the province, who want Ramaphosa to be removed as the party’s political head at next year’s elective conference.
“We now begin to think that the president is working against the ANC because we have fundamental differences with the IFP,” said another PEC member.
“It’s the same thing that we fought against under the leadership of comrade TM [Tha bo Mbeki] for his lack of consultation and going against the standing principles of the ANC. This is a clear indication that he [Ramaphosa] doesn’t understand ANC processes and we urgently need a new leader who will take the ANC back to its members,” said another PEC member.
During the negotiations, the IFP is said to have directed that the ANC commit that it would not tamper with any government structures or buildings that bear the name of Buthelezi such as the Mangosuthu University of Technology.
Buthelezi’s party wanted the ANC not to thwart all plans to rename Mangosuthu Highway, which leads to the Umlazi township.
The ANC resolved that the road should be named after its struggle icon and civil rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, who was assassinated by the apartheid security branch police.
The IFP is also pushing for the ANC to scrap the name of its region Mzala Nxumalo and give it the previous name Abaqulusi. Jabulani “Mzala” Nxumalo was an ANC activist who wrote the controversial book Gatsha Buthelezi: A Chief with a Double Agenda, which Buthelezi believes was part of the ANC’s project to defame him.
A senior IFP leader told the Sunday World that the deal has caused serious unhappiness among party members too. “Most of us were told just a few hours before a media briefing to announce the agreement. We were campaigning on the basis that we wanted to take out the ANC because it had run municipalities to the ground as a result of endemic corruption,” said the senior party leader.
IFP chief negotiator Narend Singh conceded that the IFP/ ANC pact was not a perfect arrangement, but insisted that it had to be done for the sake of governance and ensuring stability in municipalities.
A spokesperson for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal Nhlakanipho Ntombela said the first part of the deal had been sealed and ANC’s top leadership, led by Jeff Radebe, was negotiating with the IFP on some of the non-negotiables that they have put forward.
He said the PEC had begun a process of engaging party structures who have registered their displeasure. ANC spokesperson Dako ta Legoete moved to dispel reports that the deal was agreed to after a meeting between Buthelezi and Ramaphosa.
“That is not true. Both of us as ANC and Inkatha had delegations which met,” he said
To read more political news and views from this week’s paper, click here.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
