Ann Eveleth
INKATHA Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi strongly hinted this week that his party would quit the Government of National Unity in the next few weeks, leaving the African National Congress to rule South Africa alone in the run-up to the 1999 elections.
Buthelezi told the Mail & Guardian he would support a withdrawal bid by his party “if the issue came up” at the IFP’s annual general conference next month: “If it came up that the party wanted to leave, then it would be so,” he said.
Buthelezi said he did “not expect that the IFP will remain in the GNU for very long”. Describing himself as an “uncomfortable” member of the national Cabinet and his party as “the unhappy partner in the [former GNU] triumvirate”, Buthelezi said the decision was ultimately up to his party, which had sent him there in 1994: “I was actually reluctant myself, so I’m waiting for the party to react to that,” he said.
IFP secretary general Ziba Jiyane said “there is a strong possibility” that the IFP conference on July 27 and 28 would decide to withdraw from the GNU: “The general feeling in the party is that we should have withdrawn from the GNU last year. The decision to stay was based on pragmatic considerations,” he said.
Jiyane added that party opinion had not changed since last year, and while pragmatic arguments could again veto a withdrawal, “as things stand now, it is a strong possibility that we would leave — but it is only a possibility”.
Citing the ANC’s failure to honour the 1994 international mediation agreement as the “major unresolved issue” bedevilling relations between the two remaining GNU partners, Buthelezi also lashed out at President Nelson Mandela who, he said, had treated the IFP with “utter disdain … utter contempt” over the issue.
Buthelezi described his relationship with Mandela as “tense”, adding that “while on the face of it when we’re together you will see a certain affability and us respecting each other by the clan names of Madiba and Shenge, truthfully that is just our culture, which … does not reflect the feelings between us at all”.
While neither IFP leader linked the party’s possible GNU withdrawal to this week’s local government elections in KwaZulu-Natal, the prospect clearly raises the election stakes, as a victory in the IFP’s home province would shore up the party’s position in advance of a move to the opposition benches.
Buthelezi said local government elections in most countries are about “bread-and-butter issues”, but argued that KwaZulu-Natal’s local polls were also about unresolved constitutional issues.
While he supported the recent peace initiative launched by ANC and IFP leaders in the war-torn province, Buthelezi said he did not imagine “there will be any time when everything is rosy in the garden and there is no disagreement between parties. All I really long for is that differences should happen in a peaceful environment,” he said.
Some observers argued that the prospect of an IFP GNU withdrawal — sure to heighten divisions between KwaZulu-Natal’s two leading parties — was surprising in the context of the recent peace bid, but suggested that the IFP may have engaged in the peace effort in a bid to foster a new image in advance of an opposition alliance with the National Party or Democratic Party.
A realignment of opposition parties was already taking shape nationally, following the National Party’s recent GNU exit, and the IFP would have to shed its “Zulu laager” image to guarantee itself a larger slice of the new political pie.
Promoting a “new” image of itself since announcing its government departure last month, the NP has already appealed to other parties to form an opposition alliance against the ANC, and the IFP has used its KwaZulu-Natal election campaign to reach out to white and Indian voters, portraying itself as a “party of minorities and for minorities”.
While Buthelezi said NP leader FW de Klerk had approached him and “said we should get together on the basis of values”, he denied the IFP would be taking its cue from the NP: “Fortunately we’re not the lapdog of the NP and I can’t see ourselves like a little terrier dog trotting behind them, just because they have taken a decision,” he said.
Rejecting NP allegations that the IFP was clinging to the GNU “gravy train”, Buthelezi said: “I find it in bad taste when the NP members are now saying that we don’t want to leave the gravy train … because they had a lot of perks when they ran this country alone.”
Buthelezi was more positive about prospects for an IFP opposition alliance with the DP. While De Klerk had been “speaking generally, not just to the IFP, [DP leader] Tony Leon on the other hand actually came to me and said he had five values which we could share and we found no problem with them. We amended just one of them slightly and I put them to the national council and they accepted it.”
Buthelezi said, however, that he believed Leon would face “problems” within his party over such an alliance: “There are many people to whom I’ve related for decades, like Colin Eglin, who I think would love to see that, apart from Leon. But there are people in the DP who are very, very much anti-me and anti-IFP —particularly in KwaZulu-Natal,” he said.
While a successful peace effort in the province could reduce opposition from the DP’s KwaZulu-Natal caucus, the fate of the province’s constitution — around which arguments were due to be heard this week in the Constitutional Court — could still threaten that process.
Warning that a rejection of the document by the court would have a “very bad effect” on the province, Buthelezi said: “If it is not certified then we are really back to square one. I think that as long as we’re in conflict, we may not be able to succeed to reduce the tension that flares up into acts of violence between us.”