Senior African National Congress (ANC) members Dumisani Makhaye and Mike Mabuyakulu were restored to the KwaZulu-Natal government on Wednesday as the MECs for agriculture and public works respectively, after the second stand-off this year between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
They were sworn into office in Pietermaritzburg by the provincial Deputy Judge President Brian Galgut, SABC news reported.
Last year, provincial premier and leading IFP official Lionel Mtshali sacked Makhaye and Mabuyakhulu, who held the housing and economic affairs portfolios respectively, and replaced them with Democratic Alliance (DA) members.
The ANC demanded that Mtshali reinstate the pair along with former education MEC Gabriel Ndabandaba who defected from the IFP to the ANC last month, threatening to mount a vote of no-confidence in Mtshali if he did not.
Mtshali then reshuffled his cabinet and offered the ANC the portfolios of public works and of agriculture, but said he would not accept Makhaye, as he had been ”disrespectful and disruptive, to the point of likening me to Adolf Hitler and the devil in his parliamentary address”.
He would also not accept Ndabandaba.
Following talks between Mtshali and ANC provincial leader S’bu Ndebele last week and a reported apology in the provincial legislature by Ndebele on behalf of Makhaye, the premier agreed to allow their re-appointment to the provincial cabinet.
In January, Mtshali summoned a special sitting of the provincial legislature, threatened to dissolve the provincial legislature and call new elections when the ANC attempted to make a series of defections by MPLS to it, retrospective. – Sapa