Gaye Davis
A FORMER Inkatha Freedom Party member in the Western Cape has launched a R100 000 damages suit against the party for defamation.
Cape Town civil engineer George Shuttleworth was dismissed from a steering committee organising the 1992 launch of the Inkatha Freedom Party in the Western Cape and had his party membership suspended for acting in breach of the party’s constitution.
Claiming that the disciplinary action is invalid and warrants a serious defamation, Shuttleworth is suing IFP secretary general Dr Ziba Jiyane in his capacity as the party’s chief executive officer, IFP MP Harriet Ngubane, her husband, IFP member Peter Shephard and KwaZulu-Natal legislative assembly member Maurice MacKenzie.
Others named in the action were members of the steering committee at the time. They include two former stalwarts of the right-wing National Students’ Federation which was disbanded after revelations that it was secretly funded by the National Party government. They are Nick Myburgh, a Swellendam farmer who chaired the IFP’s Western Cape steering committee and Cape Town attorney Lance Terry, who was its secretary. The committee’s former clerk, Rosemary Ainslie, is also named.
All the defendants are opposing the action.