Tensions between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress have hit new heights over a land reform Bill and a draft White Paper on traditional leadership.
IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi complains that inter-party relations ”have never been worse”.
In a letter to the Mail & Guardian, Buthelezi complained that the IFP ”has failed to persuade the ANC to keep any agreements we have had with them on various issues, both before 1994 and post-1994”.
The IFP has rejected the draft White Paper, saying it violates the government’s promises of a meaningful role for the amakhosi.
The final document is expected to be submitted to the Cabinet early next year.
Tensions between the parties over the role of traditional leaders also hit Parliament this week when KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali accused the national government of failing to give traditional leaders a significant role in its rural development strategy.
In the debate in the National Council of Provinces, President Thabo Mbeki urged the amakhosi to help define their new role.
Buthelezi told the M&G last week the government had pressed ahead with the White Paper despite his objections to the draft in the Cabinet. He said the paper ”provides for the possibility that traditional leaders act as agents of the central government so that they can exercise only those powers and functions that are specifically delegated to them by an organ of the state and must do exactly as they are told.”
The Constitution recognises traditional leaders, but leaves their role to legislation.
The traditional leaders’ threat to thwart the 2000 municipal poll in their areas was averted by an agreement between the Cabinet and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa). Their opposition to elections in the tribal areas was suspended in return for a guarantee that they would be given a meaningful role.
Buthelezi also attacked the long-delayed Communal Land Rights Draft Bill, aimed at ensuring security of tenure in traditional areas, which has been published for comment. The Bill takes away traditional authorities’ power to allocate and administer land, and to determine its use.
Traditional leaders in KwaZulu-Natal are particularly irked by the inclusion in the Bill of Ngonyama Trust land, which falls under King Goodwill Zwelithini. The trust was exempted in an earlier draft, but then reinstated, apparently after protests by land activists.
Together with the draft White Paper, the proposed law indicated ”signs of a tendency … which will lead to the abolition of traditional authorities”, Buthelezi said.
The underlying notion was of ”transforming traditional leadership into an institution of civil society, dealing with culture, tradition and heritage”.
The draft White Paper and draft land law have compounded the IFP’s anger over floor-crossing legislation and a constitutional amendment, tabled in Parliament this week, that would retrospectively protect five floor-crossers who jumped the gun in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature.
The five, who would give the ANC control of the province, lost their seats when the Constitutional Court sanctioned defections at municipal level only.