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KZN becomes a two-horse race

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Zanele Magwaza-Msibi
Zanele Magwaza-Msibi

The failure by the National Freedom Party (NFP) failure to meet the registration payment deadline for the local government elections means that, come August 3, there will be a two-horse race between the NFP’s governing partner, the ANC, and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in about one third of KwaZulu-Natal’s 61 municipalities.

The 19 municipalities (16 local and three districts) are co-governed by an ANC and NFP coalition.

The NFP is a breakaway organisation from the IFP that was formed in 2011 by then-IFP national chairperson Zanele Magwaza-Msibi.

The ANC-NFP coalition broke the IFP’s historic control over large parts of Zululand, particularly north of the Tugela River.

It also helped the ANC to consolidate its position in the Midlands, the Drakensberg and the south coast.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) disqualified the NFP from participating in the election after it failed to meet the June 2 deadline to pay a deposit for registration.

It also failed in a bid to convince the Electoral Court to force the IEC to make an exception to the rule.

It has since submitted “new evidence” to the electoral body, claiming that its bid to register had been sabotaged, according to acting national chairperson Bheki Gumbi.

“We believe that the new evidence we have will change the IEC’s mind and that of the Electoral Court. If it does not, we will have to go to the Constitutional Court,” Gumbi said.

The party will continue to campaign, but will only start putting up posters once given the go-ahead from the IEC. Gumbi also believed that the publicity around its failed bid to register was helping the NFP as it kept the party in the public eye.

However, the threat to the party’s survival does not end there.

The IFP has declared its intention to win back the 19 municipalities it lost due to the NFP’s “betrayal”. The IFP has changed its campaign strategy and is wooing back the voters that followed the NFP group in 2011.

IFP head of campaigns, Narend Singh, told City Press that the party was focusing on these 19 municipalities and it was confident that the NPF’s registration debacle would benefit the IFP.

The party was also chronicling the failures of the NFP-ANC coalition to prove to voters that they were better off under the IFP.

The breakdown in governance in a large number of these municipalities will also make it difficult for the ANC to attract voters.

“We are already seeing progress in a number of municipalities where we won back seats in by-elections.

The NFP has not won a single by-election. We have also taken seats from the ANC and in the process won back public confidence. We aim to consolidate on this,” he said.

According to ANC provincial secretary Super Zuma, the party was already campaigning “alone” in these municipalities.

He said there would be no cooperation with the NFP leading up to the polls. The majority party has also deployed its top leadership to campaign north of the Tugela in recent weeks.

IEC spokesperson Thabani Ngwira said the outcome of the NFP’s new representations had not yet been determined.

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