The IFP and the DA making eyes at each other, the PAC making eyes at the Boers, the UDM making eyes at just about everyone … These are the machinations of opposition parties as the next election approaches. The Mail & Guardian spoke to opposition leaders this week
Drew Forrest
The Inkatha Freedom Party is reassessing its cooperation pact with the African National Congress, and sees no insurmountable barrier to closer ties with the Democratic Alliance, IFP leaders said this week.
This is the first sign that Inkatha anger over its perceived mistreatment by its coalition partner could boil over into a party realignment.
A senior Inkatha source, who asked not to be named, signalled some urgency. “Politics boils down to numbers; decisions must be made in good time for the 2004 election,” he said.
Apparently responding to the mounting chorus of IFP complaints, the ANC’s legkotla at the weekend passed a motion reaffirming cooperation with the IFP, based on the “shared interests of the parties’ mass constituencies”, and calling for the strengthening of the parties’ 1999 cooperation pact.
ANC presidency head Smuts Ngonyama said there were bound to be “ups and downs” in a cooperative arrangement between parties that did not necessarily share ideologies. However, he would be “very surprised” if the IFP pulled out.
But DA provincial leader Roger Burrows said his party had established an internal committee to examine prospects for a rapprochement with the IFP. This would sound out the “various” views of DA members.
Relations between the DA and IFP in KwaZulu-Natal have not always been cordial. The DA complains that the IFP has consistently backed the ANC in the Durban metro, notably on the provision of Aids drugs.
Actions of DA legislature member Belinda Scott, seen as “belittling the IFP and its leadership”, are said to have been raised at a meeting between party leaders last year.
DA leader Tony Leon said his party was “a little gun-shy of alliances”, given last year’s DA split. However, he had a good personal relationship with IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the parties already co-governed seven municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal.
“There have been no formal discussions, and any forward movement would need considerable exploration. But there is no reason why it shouldn’t happen,” Leon said. The DA’s central project was stronger opposition, and the IFP had to decide where it stood on this.
Buthelezi and ANC president Thabo Mbeki’s mutual antipathy, aggravated by ANC filibustering of the Immigration Bill and conflict over Buthelezi’s Director General of Home Affairs, Billy Masetlha, is well known.
However, sources said the IFP also resented the importance the ANC attached to its pact with the New National Party and its failure to consult the IFP on planned floor-crossing legislation, which could jeopardise the latter’s control of KwaZulu-Natal.
Policy differences between the ANC and IFP are becoming more marked and more openly expressed, in part reflecting an IFP move to claw back some of the white support it has shed since 1994.
At its recent national council meeting, Buthelezi rapped the government on Aids, Zimbabwe and the rand. This week KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali announced he would implement the court judgement ordering the government to supply anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-infected pregnant women although there appeared to have been a subsequent climb-down on this.
Commentators said the IFP would think very carefully before sacrificing the national visibility of its three Cabinet ministers. The senior IFP source said a breach with the ANC might compromise reconciliation in KwaZulu-Natal.
But he said: “This should not weigh too heavily in thinking about other options. The ANC stance on HIV/Aids is untenable; we’re in cahoots with a party that’s telling people: ‘Die, die, die.’ It’s giving us terrible problems in KwaZulu-Natal.”
The source said the IFP was coming round to the view that matters would not improve while Mbeki was ANC leader. “My suspicion is that his strategy is to contain Buthelezi, as [Robert] Mugabe contained [Joshua] Nkomo in Zimbabwe.”
Some ANC leaders, including Jacob Zuma and Kgalema Motlanthe, remained committed to the relationship, he said.
He understood that at a recent ANC national executive committee meeting, Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya protested that the ANC’s primary and historical ties were with the IFP, not the NNP.
Striking a notably conciliatory note on the DA, the source said the IFP “had no reason to refuse the hand of friendship”, and the parties could work together “providing we agree on a programme”.
The DA’s mainly white leadership and large white following were not an issue, he said, as “they are South Africans. We believe in non-racialism and a nation-building programme that makes whites feel at home.”
Although there were no major policy differences, the IFP would want a clear definition of where the DA stood on traditional leadership, the source said. There were also differences over whether Pietermaritzburg or Ulundi should be KwaZulu-Natal’s capital.
Leon conceded traditional leadership stood at the top of the IFP’s agenda, while it was close to the bottom of the DA’s. Burrows suggested the matter could be resolved by agreeing to disagree or through an interparty committee of experts.