Ann Eveleth
SENIOR Inkatha Freedom Party leaders this week closed ranks around party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi and engaged in a concerted damage-control exercise following the untimely leakage of the contentious “20- point plan” last week.
While African National Congress leaders accused the party of launching a bid to secede KwaZulu/Natal from the rest of the country, IFP leaders Sipho Mzimela and Ziba Jiyane rallied behind the proposal, saying its contents were consistent with the party’s federalist
Party secretary general Jiyane pointed out that the leaked document represented nothing more than a proposal to “speed up” the provincial-led process for federalism agreed at the party’s special general conference in March. At that conference, Buthelezi called for the IFP’s “provincial army” to stand up and lead the battle. Most of the 20 points can be found in prior negotiating documentation of the party which informed its pre-election boycott last year.
ANC leaders admitted this week that many of the proposals did fall within the parameters of the constitution, but criticised the “manner of implementation” in which the document calls for “as many actions as possible (to be) taken at the same
ANC constitutional affairs committee chairman Pravin Ghordan said this was aimed at “causing a constitutional crisis”.
Ghordan — who attends meetings of the Intergovernmental Forum from which IFP KwaZulu/Natal Premier Frank Mdlalose withdrew last week — said such a crisis could not be deemed warranted in respect of any issues the party had raised at the forum. “The (IFP) has had the odd complaint … there might be a few outstanding issues, but nothing to provoke a constitutional crisis,” Ghordan said.
Mdlalose told the KwaZulu/Natal parliament sitting in Ulundi this week that central government’s failure to assign powers was hampering progress in every area from education and health to local government and development: “The inordinate delay … has no doubt put the provincial government in a very invidious position” because the failure to assign new laws meant the continuation of separate apartheid laws for the former KwaZulu and Natal.
ANC provincial transport minister S’bu Ndebele retorted that when the former KwaZulu government had “rushed to control” hospitals, schools and other competencies it was not ready for, the result had been the deterioration of services.
Ndebele said “self-respecting black people and doctors left KwaZulu hospitals … teachers left, police stations became feared by the communities … (and) farms … bought back from whites … were leased back to whites”. ANC provincial MP Mike Sutcliffe said the devolution of powers was not the real issue: “If this was a serious problem of the province not operating effectively because of a lack of powers it would’ve been discussed at Cabinet. It hasn’t.” Sutcliffe said it was clear that “most of the provincial departments have not even exercised the powers they have”.
Sutcliffe said the education department, for example, had not even finished amalgamating the former apartheid departments: “So how can they think of taking over curricula, training, etc?”, he asked.
The 20-point plan — which the IFP’s Mzimela says still needs to be referred by the national council to the party’s “strategy committee” where it originated, before being considered by the national council “in August at the earliest” — calls for the adoption of far-reaching provincial legislation claiming exclusive powers over land management, water, forestry, civil service and a “provincial security and protection force” which could employ “several thousand armed protection agents under the direct and exclusive control of the province”.
The document also calls for a parliamentary budget for legal and economic support to be made “available to the IFP parliamentary caucus to develop additional legislative initiatives and to promote the governance of the province”, the director of which should be “immediately accountable to the IFP leadership”.
The ANC’s Nzimande said these aspects revealed the document to be a “first building-block for secession. It is not by accident called ‘a minimal institutional plan’. It implies a wider offensive”, he said.
Nzimande claimed the document’s attack on President Nelson Mandela’s initiative to pay traditional leaders centrally indicated the IFP was “trying to force the President to fire Buthelezi to give him a justification for returning to the province”.
Buthelezi’s response to Mandela’s attack on him in Tanzania as the root cause of the ANC/IFP conflict raised the spectre of his withdrawal from the Government of National Unity. The question of Buthelezi’s return to the province has, party sources say, been the subject of a committee debate for some time, the recommendations of which are expected to be debated soon. The prospect has also fuelled speculation, in both ANC and IFP circles, that the party could call a snap election in a bid to shore up its election majority in KwaZulu/Natal.