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The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) hopes to exploit the failed coalition between the breakaway National Freedom Party (NFP) and the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal’s rural towns in a bid to secure control of 19 municipalities it lost in the 2011 local government poll.
The party – whose president Mangosuthu Buthelezi will unveil its manifesto in Durban today after 10 days of campaigning in and around the eThekwini Metro to build up momentum for the launch – also hopes that a public commitment to clean governance and service delivery by the candidates that it will introduce to the voters will be enough to secure a better slice of the voters in KwaZulu-Natal’s biggest urban centre.
The IFP took a hammering in the 2011 poll, with the NFP, which was formed by former IFP national chairperson Zanele Magwaza-Msibi when she broke away from her lifelong political home in January 2011, winning control of the 19 local and district municipalities through an alliance with the ANC.
However, revolts within the NFP, the poor health of its leader and strained relations with the governing party at council level saw the coalition implode, with several councils being placed under administration as a result of the infighting between NFP and ANC councillors.
Yesterday, the IFP president and the party’s entire national executive hit the streets of Durban’s KwaMashu township after several days of door-to-door work in the southern townships.
Party head of campaigns Narend Singh was unwilling to give away much about the content of the IFP’s manifesto, but said the party would focus on exploiting the “fracture that we can see going on in that relationship for the past year or two”.
“We are expecting our leader to get the candidates who will be introduced to the public to reaffirm their commitment to service delivery and running municipalities free of corruption,” Singh told City Press yesterday.
The manifesto, he said, would focus on the “tried and tested governance model the IFP had in KwaZulu-Natal for 10 years” and exploit the adverse finding the Auditor-General had made about municipalities since they fell under ANC/NFP control.
“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 off the ANC,” he said.
Buthelezi is also likely to reveal a renewed IFP focus on political oversight over political representatives in a bid to ensure that they do not engage in corruption and stray from their mandate.
The manifesto and the candidate list is also aimed at gaining further support from minority communities, who are well represented on the IFP list, according to Singh, to “deal with the myth that we are a Zulu party”.
“Our current level of representation of minorities shows that we are a non-racial party. Emphasis has been placed on this in the list process for August,” he added.
“Our emphasis will be on taking what has worked in the past into the future. Good governance worked for us for 10 years. We will take it into the future by tightening up in areas that didn’t work like coalition agreements and poor performance of councillors.”
