Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) President Mangosuthu Buthelezi accused the Mail & Guardian newspaper of purveying African National Congress (ANC) propaganda ahead of the general national elections next year.
Addressing the annual IFP Women’s Brigade at Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal, Buthelezi said the newspaper wanted to divert attention away from the ruling party when it published an article under the headline ”Scorpions hunt for Inkatha’s arsenal”.
The article, which was a front page lead story of the paper on Friday, said the Scorpions were attempting to find evidence against exiled IFP senator Phillip Powell.
Buthelezi responded: ”They clearly wanted to divert attention away from the mounting wave of criticism of the ANC leadership by exhuming an old and buried story, which is used over and again against us whenever elections approach.
”This story was organised as the main propaganda show against us in the 1999 elections. If they wish to have a repeat performance of such an infamous show for the 2004 elections, they are really showing their political desperation,” he said.
”In 1993, a shipment of weapons from the South African government to Jonas Savimbi was diverted without the knowledge of any of the IFP leaders, and apartheid secret agent Eugene de Kock offered these weapons to Phillip Powell, who agreed to keep them. We only learnt about this when Eugene de Kock disclosed it in order to gain amnesty from the TRC,” he said.
”Senator Powell agreed to reveal the whereabouts of the weapons if he was given full indemnity. This was agreed to and Powell took officials to a farm where the weapons were buried.”
The officials then decided to blow them up because they felt that since they had been buried for six years, the weapons had become unstable and dangerous.
They blew up the arsenal before anyone could take an inventory of its contents, Buthelezi said.
After this the Public Prosecutions Directorate said it would not honour Powell’s indemnity because it was felt that not all the weapons had been declared.
Buthelezi said the onus was put on Powell to prove that he complied with the conditions of the indemnity, however, there was no way he could do this because the evidence was destroyed.
Buthelezi said to the assembly: ”We have never held the ANC accountable for its failure to disclose the location of its immense arms cashes which it received from a number of sources, including the former Soviet Union.
”Two days before being killed, Sifiso Nkadinde, who was an ANC leader and former righthand man of Harry Gwala, came to my house and told me that the ANC still had massive hidden armed cashes at its disposal, ” he said.
”We have always been serious about peace and reconciliation, but is seems that the way in which the issue of Senator Powell continues to be used against us shows that there is no equal seriousness on the side of the ANC,” Buthelezi said. ‒ Sapa
Scorpions hunt for Inkatha’s guns