The African National Congress’s alliance partners — the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) — this week condemned the Inkatha Freedom Party’s election ”machinations” in KwaZulu-Natal, revealed in last week’s Mail & Guardian.
The M&G reported last week that the IFP was plotting to use taxpayers’ money to enhance the profile of the party’s provincial ministers and to weaken the ANC ahead of the 2004 election.
The plan was formulated by an ”elite” group within the IFP called the strategic coordinating unit (Stratcon) and was presented to the IFP’s national council in March this year.
Stratcon singles out the ANC’s provincial chairperson, S’bu Ndebele, and his deputy, Zweli Mkhize. It says their image must be weakened through cutting their budgets and having Premier Lionel Mtshali take credit for their achievements.
Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the revelation suggested that the IFP ”is still not sufficiently committed to a peaceful and united province”.
He said the report demonstrated that the ”IFP is not interested in the development of the province other than to ensure that it wins the elections through dirty tricks.
”This behaviour suggests the IFP is reverting to its unfortunate history of attacking other parties in underhanded ways. As everybody knows, the IFP connived and worked with the apartheid machinery to oppress the people it purports to represent.”
The union federation called on the IFP to ”make a clean break with
its unfortunate past and genuinely embrace peace and development”.
The IFP plan was set in motion after a meeting between Stratcon and the IFP component of the KwaZulu-Natal government held in January. It aims to use the departmental budgets of IFP provincial ministers to create a ”warm” and ”caring” image of the IFP leadership and to downplay and hijack the successes of ANC provincial ministers.
In a statement this week the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal called for an urgent investigation into the matter and accused the IFP of employing ”old tactics of manipulating people”.
SACP provincial secretary Smiso Nkwanyana said the IFP was ”creating false images and deceiving people”.