White strategists were the main beneficiaries at the IFP’s national conference, reports Ann Eveleth
The Inkatha Freedom Party stood on the brink of the 20th century last weekend, but its leadership took one look into the future and scurried back to the 18th-century domain of kings Shaka and Cetshwayo.
Joining forces with conservative British advisers mired in the Imperial mythology of the great warrior Zulu nation which defeated the mighty “redcoats”, the IFP’s national conference signalled a rejection of modern democratic reforms and set confrontation as its “quintessential political soul”.
Shirking the soul-searching required for the party to set its feet on solid political ground for the next elections — and to chart a course for peaceful coexistence with the African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal — the IFP rallied around the strategies which have so far led it down the path of decline. Many of the party’s 1995 conference resolutions were repeated and, with a wave of leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s stick, failures were turned into victories of the future.
The main beneficiaries of this political-muti ritual were the IFP’s white strategists — particularly constitutional negotiator Walter Felgate, who emerged from the conference stronger than ever.
The loser, on whom the party’s electoral woes were blamed, was secretary general Ziba Jiyane. His modernising efforts were deemed insulting largely because the co-product of his modus operandi would be a far-reaching democratisation that would threaten the powers behind the party’s throne.
Jiyane’s current battle for political survival closely mirrors the struggles which preceded the resignation of his two predecesors, Sibusiso Bengu and Oscar Dhlomo.
Patting itself on the back for the “wisdom” of its Constitutional Assembly boycott, despite the fact that this has meant failure to influence the national Constitution, the IFP resolved again to wage its battles against the central government from its “KwaZulu-Natal institutional base”.
The conference called on the provincial legislature to pursue “a proactive legislative and administrative programme … to implement the provincial constitution and secure and exercise the maximum degree of autonomy to which it is constitutionally entitled”.
Like a broken record, the IFP yet again lashed out at the central government for its failure to grant the provinces exclusive policing powers, and at the ANC for its failure to honour the 1994 agreement on international mediation.
More ominously — despite a perfunctory resolution “endorsing” the recent peace initiative — the party set both these points as preconditions for the continuation of the peace effort. Buthelezi said the initiative remained an “empty shell” while the ANC worried about the IFP-controlled province developing its own private army.
In fact, the peace process which had generated widespread optimism in the province recently hardly featured at the conference. Buthelezi only mentioned it on the last page of his speech — and then in the context of rejecting the “exaggerated propaganda about the so-called merger” between the ANC and IFP.
Instead of grappling with the changing domestic politics, and calling on the party’s largest official gathering to help foster peace and thus tranform its volatile image, the IFP put its fate in the hands of a new group of foreigners. Staunchly defending British consultants Ian Greer and Associates against criticism that they had failed to understand the electorate, Buthelezi lashed out at members of his own party for leaking the criticism to the press. “It is a stinking lie by cranks in our own party who are disloyal to the IFP and will stop at nothing to demonise the party to which they owe a living,” he said.
Like Greer and Felgate, Buthelezi focused blame for the party’s poor election performance on Jiyane’s office. He said it had “not succeeded in developing adequate programmes to project the IFP into communities”.
Although Felgate’s strategy had netted the party few tangible gains, and included huge concessions to the ANC on the provincial constitution, Buthelezi rallied to his defence. “When compared to our high aspirations, [it] falls far short … however, when considered by itself, the KwaZulu-Natal constitution represents a gigantic achievement in the struggle for liberation.” He did not mention that it was Jiyane, in the end, who secured an all-inclusive deal with the ANC, whereas Felgate could not.
While Buthelezi decried the “lack of internal discipline, personal agendas, infighting and undermining of colleagues” which had plagued party structures, he made no reference to the invidious role of Felgate’s Portfolio on Constitutional and Legislative Affairs (Pocola), or its electoral failures after wresting control of the election machinery from Jiyane’s head office. Felgate’s bungling of the Durban campaign, where the party secured barely 12% of the vote, was not mentioned.
While Buthelezi recognised the importance of delivery in extending the party’s support, he blamed the central government for “emasculating” the province, ignoring the millions of rands in unspent development funds in the province’s coffers.
When he cited the need to “cut off dead branches” and said the party must “be driven by leaders with true constituencies”, his comments appeared to be directed at the new breed of white and Indian parliamentarians who had failed to deliver votes — – partly out of frustration at being told to “march by the generals of Pocola”. His comments did not focus on the tier of traditional deadwood blamed by party moderates for the provincial goverment’s lethargy, nor on the clique of rootless white advisers on whom he has relied.
Jiyane’s bold plans to tie power to grassroots work were subverted into the tried-and-failed pledge of the party’s old-style stalwarts to “restructure”. Most of the proposed changes involved a renewed effort by Felgate and treasurer general Arthur Konigkramer to wrest control of party finances.
Wrapped in this internal bickering, the IFP failed dismally to review the image it presented to the electorate during June’s provincial elections. Greer’s Thatcherite Cold War rhetoric failed to convince voters to go to the polls, and his Cosatu- bashing lyrics did not win the party any support among black voters in ANC-supporting townships, but Buthelezi’s conference speech still bore Greer’s unmistakable influence as he attacked Cosatu for being the “labour aristocracy” responsible for the woes of South Africa’s unemployed workers.
What Greer had failed to realise was that most unemployed workers depend on workers — many of whom belong to Cosatu — for their survival. In his zest to promote global Thatcherism, Greer mistook African extended families for British nuclear families.
Until Buthelezi realises that it is the black leaders within his party who are in tune with the electorate, the IFP stands little chance of building a national profile. The best Greer — or any of the white image-makers whom he has relied on over the decades — can hope to do is attempt to resurrect the dual personae which earned him international kudos in the 1980s while he was embroiled in a vicious civil war back home. But that will be much more difficult to sustain in an integrated South Africa.