Ivor Powell
More than 20 senior leaders of the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal have secretly defected to the African National Congress before the June election.
A top ANC leader in the province told the Mail & Guardian that at least six of the turncoats are members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature. The group also includes traditional leaders, prominent figures in the IFP Youth Brigade, members of the Zulu royal family and members of Parliament.
“Most of them approached the ANC out of frustration with the undemocratic leadership of the IFP,” the ANC leader said. “There was also a sense that the IFP was failing to move away from the militarist strategies of the past.”
A special committee has been set up by the ANC to explore ways of integrating the covert cadres into ANC structures and to decide when and how the defections should be announced.
ANC leaders agreed to speak to the M&G only on condition that identities were not revealed. The names of some of the defectors are known to the M&G.
IFP representative Reverend Musa Zondi said he doubted the truth of the claims. “If they really have defected, let them announce the names. The IFP stands for democracy and if there are security problems, they can be given guards.
“Without the names, I think this is psychological warfare and nothing more than a slur.”
“This is a matter of enormous sensitivity,” one ANC leader said. “Identifying these people would be like signing their death warrants. We have to be in a position to absolutely guarantee their security before we say who these people are.”
The ANC has employed private security guards to protect the score of IFP defectors while deliberations around their re-alliance continue.
ANC leaders said the covert defectors have been in a position to significantly influence the recently revived peace process in KwaZulu-Natal – which saw a minor victory last week with the signing of a code of conduct for political parties in which signatories explicitly eschewed violence as a means to political ends.
The defections come as recent election opinion polls show a gap of nearly 20% in voter support between the ANC and the IFP in the province.
The ANC’s “moles” have also been instrumental in promoting bilateral discussions aimed at promoting closer links between the ANC and the IFP.
The ANC, within the provincial peace process initiated by ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma and former IFP chair Frank Mdlalose, has at times mooted a possible merger between the two parties. But a more likely scenario appears to be maintaining a government of national and provincial unity with a strong IFP presence, and possibly a deputy presidency for IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
“These are the peacemakers inside the party,” an ANC leader said. “It’s partly because they’re tired of war and warlords that they approached us in the first place.”
The peacemaking initiatives have balanced out recent moves to clamp down on IFP warlords and alleged third force elements still associated with the IFP.
Following the discovery of IFP legislator Phillip Powell’s seven-ton arms cache near Ulundi last week, and the discovery of arms caches on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, police raided IFP militants earlier this week, seizing a substantial number of firearms and quantities of ammunition.
The ANC strategy is to isolate the militants from the more moderate sectors of the IFP, and gradually to bring these moderates into a “black nationalist fold”.
ANC sources said that much of the groundwork for the defections had been laid by earlier crossovers to the party, notably those of former IFP central committee member and Buthelezi confidant Walter Felgate and Bulwer IFP Youth Brigade leader Dumisane Khuzwayo.
After controversially crossing the floor late last year, Khuzwayo – a one-time militant of the IFP – has been instrumental in persuading significant sectors of the youth brigade to throw in their lot with the ANC.
Following Khuzwayo’s lead, the majority of IFP youth branches from the Midlands areas around Bulwer and Donnybrook moved across late last year to the ANC. More recently branches on the South Coast have indicated their realignment.
Most political violence in the run-up to the June elections has occurred mainly in areas that were formerly no-go areas for the ANC, but which it is now contesting.
In northern KwaZulu-Natal, notably in Dundee, Nkandla and Paulpietersburg, a similar pattern has emerged. ANC campaigning in the formerly no-go areas around Nkandla last week saw thousands of youth members turn out in support of their new political party and even come into conflict with their elders when the IFP tried to chase the ANC campaigners out.
“The ANC has been conspicuously delivering in nothern KwaZulu-Natal, with high-level delegations turning out to open clinics and schools and the like. The people are seeing the ANC government as one that does deliver things that in 29 years Buthelezi never did,” an ANC leader said.
It is understood that Felgate has been associated with the defections. He declined to make any comment on the matter, saying “any announcement would be a death warrant”.