The Inkatha Freedom Party is planning to oust some of its top political representatives following its election defeat in KwaZulu-Natal’s main cities, the province’s economic heartland.
Party members will also debate whether to form an alliance with either the National Party or the African National Congress.
IFP leaders said the party was expected to do a major overhaul of its parliamentary lists. Some of its provincial deadwood will probably be forced to quit, making way for national heavyweights to bolster its forces in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
National Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane has been mentioned as one leader whose talents may be recruited to help the party shore up its provincial image in advance of the 1999 national elections.
Seen as a long-term successor to IFP national chairman Frank Mdlalose as premier, Ngubane has also been tipped as a possible successor to party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
IFP secretary general Ziba Jiyane said a National Council meeting would begin a process of “intensive introspection and thorough self-criticism from which we can only emerge with a broader appeal”.
Debates over the party’s future in the Government of National Unity appeared to have been placed on the back-burner in favour of this reassessment, with Jiyane this week reducing last week’s “strong possibility” of a withdrawal to a “50-50” chance.
Jiyane said the party would “leave no stone unturned” in its appraisal of the election results, and the process would stretch well beyond the party’s national conference due in three weeks and may include a series of workshops in which party leaders would examine the party’s policies and direction.
IFP leaders said two views were being expressed within their ranks: one favoured building an alliance with the NP with the aim of fitting into its initiative to create a new political movement to challenge the ANC for national power in 1999, while others wanted an alliance with the ANC.
The IFP leaders said if the National Council endorses Ngubane’s return to the province, this would bolster the chances of an ANC-IFP alliance — – at least in KwaZulu-Natal.
Ngubane is known to have a healthy relationship with all ANC leaders, nationally and provincially.
Mdlalose is believed to favour co-operation with the ANC at local government level — an idea mooted by the ANC following its massive urban sweep last week. However the NP is trying to prevent the formation of such an alliance, fearing it could snowball into an ANC-IFP alliance at higher levels of the government.
It is understood that the NP had already reached a tentative agreement with elements within the IFP to outvote the ANC for control of the Richard’s Bay Transitional Local Council, which the ANC won, but failed to secure an overall majority.
However, other elements within the IFP, which favoured easing grassroots tensions to place the focus on delivery, had formed a compact with the ANC to work together in the strife-torn Estcourt-Wembezi council, where the two parties were evenly matched and together outnumber the majority ratepayers association.
Jiyane said the party had instructed newly-elected councillors within its ranks to form “tactical alliances” based on local situations until the party decided which direction to take.
Party leaders suggested the debate on local government alliances would need to be resolved by this weekend, in advance of the local horsetrading which would precede the first formal meetings of the new councils. The debate about the party’s national future was likely to rage on for much longer.
Both the ANC and NP are testing the waters with the party at local government level. The ANC’s offer of local government co-operation is seen as an extension of the recent peace initiative and, if extended to provincial and national levels, could herald the end of bloodshed and the beginning of an era in which South Africa’s two leading black parties would move forward on the basis of delivering to a common constituency.
Jiyane did not rule out an ANC-IFP alliance, saying: “In principle, I’m not against the possibility. Our constituencies are the same — the poorest of the poor.”
Other IFP leaders say such an alliance could also give the IFP an opportunity to extract constitutional concessions from the ANC, and soften ANC determination to destroy the IFP’s powerbase in KwaZulu-Natal.
Other IFP leaders, however, appear more inclined to support an opposition alliance. The party’s local government MEC Peter Miller argued that KwaZulu- Natal’s electorate had delivered a “two-thirds anti- ANC vote.
“There is a clear potential for realignment [with the NP and DP],” he said. Dismissing the prospects of an alliance with the ANC, Miller said the ANC’s co-operation offer was “just big talk. In Maritzburg they control two-thirds of the council. Do you think they are going to be altruistic and form an alliance when their own councillors want positions?”
Critics say Miller’s suggestion of an IFP-NP alliance would merely herald a return to the segregated politics of the past, when the IFP ruled the province’s black population through the KwaZulu homeland while the NP controlled the “minority” populations in white Natal.
IFP leaders said the party would have to find a common ground between these opposing viewpoints before it take its place in South Africa’s emerging political realignment.
The decisions it takes will be pivotal in determining whether the party can reverse the backslide it experienced last week or find itself relegated to history’s scrapyard by the forces of urbanisation and development.