The National Council of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) on Saturday mandated the party’s chief whip and the premier of KwaZulu-Natal to call an early election in the province.
In a statement issued after a council meeting in Ulundi, the IFP said the election should be held ”before the undemocratic constitutional amendment aimed at warping the will of the people and usurping the premiership of KwaZulu-Natal comes into force”.
The statement details a number of resolutions adopted during the meeting — all denouncing the ”immoral, expedient and deplorable attempt” to amend the constitution in order to reinstate five erstwhile IFP members of the provincial legislature who crossed the floor to the ANC a month or two ago. They lost their seats because the act allowing a crossing of the floor was not yet in force, and then lost a court battle to regain the seats.
The statement notes that a new electoral law which could address all the relevant issues and ”could even allow crossing of the floor” was being drafted, and that it was obvious that the only purpose of the constitutional amendment was that of changing the power relations in KwaZulu-Natal before the 2004 elections.
The statement warns that an ”embryonic one-party state is in gestation” and calls on the ”friends of democracy” to ”promote multiparty democracy through the ballot box… and prevent the consolidation of a one-party State”.
The council met after the national leaders of the ANC and the IFP held talks in Pretoria on December 3 to discuss KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali’s decision to sack two ANC MECs — Housing MEC Dumisani Makhaye and Economic Affairs and Tourism MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu — and replace them with members of the Democratic Alliance.
After the meeting, ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama said the parties had agreed to give the IFP leadership more time to reconsider the removal of the pair and they would review what had been agreed on in two to three weeks.
It was not immediately clear how an early election could take place in KwaZulu-Natal with no electoral law in place.
The 1996 Constitution provides for a transitional arrangement. It specifies that the present electoral system at national and provincial level only applies until 1999.
The electoral task team under Frederik van Zyl Slabbert — tasked with investigating a new electoral system for the country and helping to draft a new law — has yet to make its recommendations public.
Meanwhile, Cabinet sources told Sapa that IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is also Home Affairs Minister, went to Cabinet with a one-line bill, which if it had been accepted would have extended the 1999 electoral system to allow for an early election.
It is understood the proposal did not find favour with the Cabinet. The call for an early election in KwaZulu-Natal — hinted at previously by Mtshali — comes on the eve of the ANC’s 51st national conference in Stellenbosch.
The DA’s provincial leader Roger Burrows, who was recently promoted to Mtshali’s cabinet after Mtshali axed the two ANC MECs, has also come out publicly in support of an early election.
According to the latest ”Afro Barometer poll” on political support in South Africa, released on Friday, the ANC leads in voting intention in all nine provinces.
The IFP and the ANC entered into a coalition pact in June 1999 in the province after neither received an outright majority in the provincial election.
According to the Afro Barometer survey, in KwaZulu-Natal, 21% of voters say they would vote ANC, 10% IFP and four percent DA.
However, researchers noted that opinion surveys have consistently overestimated ANC support and underestimated IFP support in that province since at least 1993.
There has also been a sharp increase in the number of voters who say they will not vote if an election were held tomorrow, or simply refuse to reveal any preference. When combined, these responses were especially high in KwaZulu-Natal (58%). ‒ Sapa