Jaspreet Kindra
Days after Deputy President Jacob Zuma called for “restraint” in tense relations between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party, the two parties waged a ding-dong battle over Aids drugs and other issues in the legislature.
Zuma flew into Ulundi to try to defuse tensions last weekend.
Lauding KwaZulu-Natal’s coalition government and its “vibrant” legislature as a rolemodel for others, Zuma told MPLs that the recent “acrimonious exchanges” did not “augur well for the coalition.”
He urged members to walk “the extra mile” to promote “extraordinary understanding”, “extraordinary ways of compromise” and exercise “extraordinary restraint”.
Two days later, on Monday, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali took a swipe at President Thabo Mbeki’s views on the causal link between HIV and Aids in his state of the province address.
“In this province this axiom of science is not open to bizarre personal theories with no relation to reality,” Mtshali said, adding: “Neither I nor any concerned fellow South African could be satisfied with the official national government policy.”
The following day ANC provincial leader and transport MEC S’bu Ndebele warned that a situation where Mtshali ran the health portfolio, instead of the ANC’s health MEC Zweli Mkhize, would not continue. Ndebele also accused Mtshali of secretly meeting taxi operators without him.
Underlying the conflict is the ANC’s long-standing demand for two more provincial cabinet posts, and an IFP call for the role of traditional leaders and the monarchy to be defined in local government structures.
Mtshali said trials of anti-retroviral drugs AZT and nevirapine in breast-feeding women had shown a continued efficacy for 18 to 24 months. Any long-term resistance to the drug was “transient and fades away”, he said, citing Thailand, Botswana, Uganda and Brazil as examples of countries where the drug was being administered.
A bristling Ndebele accused Mtshali of not attending meetings of the KwaZulu-Natal Aids Council, adding: “Surely, in the state of the province, the fight against poverty should claim pride of place.”
Citing the Natal Witness, Ndebele suggested the Inkatha Freedom Party’s stance on anti-retrovirals revolved around IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s desire to extricate himself from his “marriage of convenience with the ANC” on terms that would give him an electoral advantage.
Ndebele revealed Mtshali had written to Minister of Local Government Sydney Mufamadi forbidding two ministers deployed to oversee the rural development strategy in the province to visit KwaZulu-Natal, until the row over traditional leaders was resolved.
Making a clear attempt to woo King Goodwill Zwelithini, who also lamented the deadlock over the chiefs in the legislature on Friday, Ndebele tried to drive another wedge between the monarch and the IFP.
The ANC leader claimed that Mtshali had written to Daimler Chrysler questioning the company’s decision to provide the king with a courtesy car pending the delivery of his official vehicle.
“Members will have noticed that His Majesty arrived for the opening of the legislature in an old jalopy,” Ndebele said.