The African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal moved to defuse tension between itself and the Inkatha Freedom Party this week by getting senior leader Dumisani Makhaye to withdraw his description in November last year of Premier Lionel
Mtshali as a ”devil”.
With two weeks to go before the IFP decides on its continued participation in national government, the ANC focused on driving a wedge into the blossoming relationship between the IFP and the Democratic Alliance.
It was a week of high drama in the province as the IFP and the DA allegedly put pressure on the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) to withdraw its motion this week asking for the removal of the KwaZulu-Natal speaker, though the Christian party maintains it made the decision for the sake of ”peace and stability”.
ACDP member of the provincial parliament Jo-Ann Downs was to have tabled the motion against speaker Bonga Mdletshe of the IFP on Monday. The motion, which would have had ANC support, would have ensured Mdletshe’s removal. On Tuesday Downs tabled a modified motion taking a shot at both the ANC and the IFP.
But by then Makhaye’s decision to address the House ahead of the debate on the ACDP motion on Wednesday had already managed to defuse tempers on either side, to an extent.
Makhaye, who was alleged to have described Mtshali as a ”devil” and ”Hitler” denied that the words were meant for the premier. Makhaye told the House that he had merely drawn an analogy and if his remarks had caused offence, he would like to withdraw them.
An IFP MPL described Makhaye’s statement as ”sweet”.
Another IFP MPL said Makhaye’s apology gave the party fewer reasons to withdraw from participating in the national and provincial governments, pulling the fragile coalition back from the brink again.
Last week the Mail & Guardian revealed that IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi would seriously consider pulling out of the national government at the party’s national conference in Ulundi next month.
This week the IFP began showing its hand on what it will take to keep it in national and provincial government. During a legislature debate, a party traditionalist, Faith Gasa, said the IFP was unhappy with the ANC-led government’s failure to consecrate the rights of traditional leaders, though she pledged unity.
But anger still simmers on the surface. The IFP’s Mandla Malakoena was expelled from the House for refusing to withdraw certain allegations made against ANC leader S’bu Ndebele, while the ANC’s Bheki Cele had a go at the ”IFP’s abuse of the amakhosi” as a ”political weapon”.
The ANC’s overarching provincial strategy is to end the footsie-footsie between the IFP and the DA. Chief whip Ina Cronje made public allegedly ”anti-African” remarks noted in the reported minutes of ”a DA sub-committee” held in May last year.
Reading the parliamentary motion out on Tuesday, Cronje quoted the ”minutes” which apparently read: ”For the DA it was desirable to break the IFP-ANC cooperation at provincial and national level” and ”that an Africanist, poor-people agenda could leave the DA alone and exposed”.
She then called on the House to condemn the ”cynical anti-African utterances by the DA and their desire to drive a wedge between the ANC and the IFP and the blatant manner in which the DA uses and abuses the IFP to further their own political agenda at the expense of the poor people of this country”.
The ANC strategy continued when the party also tried to expose the DA’s newfound commitment to traditional leadership as flimsy. The ANC’s Senzo Mchunu cited yet another allegedly DA document that states that the DA is ”the only party fully and totally committed not to accept traditional leaders in a democratic framework of government but as a traditional structure maintained by those amongst the Zulu who want them”.
Mchunu urged the House to condemn this ”derogatory and racist statement by the DA on traditional leaders and the Zulu-speaking people in the strongest possible terms” and called on the IFP to distance itself from ”such colonial utterances”.
An ANC insider said: ”We are playing this all very tactically.”