Inkatha Freedom Party Youth Brigade leader Thulasizwe Buthelezi has launched a stinging attack on the party’s national chairperson, Ziba Jiyane, for “using the youth with the covert aim” of ousting IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
The youth leader told the Mail & Guardian this week that “there is a battle for the soul of the IFP raging in party ranks”. He accused Jiyane and “members of the provincial legislature and IFP councillors” of using the youth “as a platform” to further their own political ends.
The youth leader said members of youth brigade branches, particularly in KwaDukuza and Mtubatuba, were attempting to mobilise the party’s youth movement to topple Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the IFP’s annual conference in July.
“These elements want the youth brigade to stage a huge drama at the upcoming annual conference,” he said. “I have had phone calls from both youth members and senior party leaders, and I have attended events where people have sung songs and made speeches about the need for a change [of leadership].”
He said that at a youth brigade rally in Mtubatuba at the end of last month a 500-strong crowd welcomed an address by Jiyane with the Zulu song amahlathi aphelile akusekho ukucasha (the woods are no more, there is no place to hide), while turning their hands in the air — the signal used by football coaches to indicate player substitution. “The insinuation was that it is time for Jiyane to take over,” he said.
The youth leader said he was angry that Jiyane did not obtain permission from the youth brigade’s national leadership to address both this rally and another in KwaDukuza earlier in the year.
“These people who are bent on sowing discord should not go around and use constituencies which are not their own to destabilise the party,” said the youth leader.
Jiyane vehemently denied Thulasizwe Buthelezi’s claim that he was eyeing Buthelezi’s position. Although he had heard “rumours of a succession debate” he was uninvolved and could not comment, he said.
The youth leader of the KwaDukuza region, Musa Sibisi and Msancane Nhleko, of the Mtuba-tuba region refused to comment, referring all queries to the party’s national spokesperson, Musa Zondi.
Zondi said: “This is a youth brigade matter,” adding that there was no succession debate in the IFP.
Thulasizwe Buthelezi’s broadside is the latest evidence of friction between the IFP old guard and younger elements that want to reform a party whose national electoral support sank to 8% last year and which lost KwaZulu-Natal to the African National Congress.
At the IFP’s annual conference last July, the youth set out to dislodge national chairperson Lionel Mtshali, seen as a traditionalist, and replace him with Jiyane, regarded as a moderniser.
Said Thulasizwe Buthelezi: “After the annual conference last year elements in the party began to view the youth as a kingmaker. The youth themselves were buoyed and emboldened by their power.”
The M&G understands that at the IFP’s national council meeting two weekends ago, Mangosuthu Buthelezi read out a letter in Zulu from “a concerned youth member”, saying that the IFP president should begin “grooming his successor” and should ultimately step down to make space for Jiyane.
Last Saturday Thulasizwe Buthelezi called a meeting of the youth brigade’s national executive committee, where it was decided that a national council meeting would take place at the end of May to give all “youth brigade structures around the country an opportunity to state their loyalty. We cannot have a divided ship,” he said.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi refused to comment. However, he has said that he does not fear a challenge to his leadership.
After rumblings about the need for a leadership change at the youth brigade’s annual conference last year, he said, “I, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, do not fear change … I do not fear a new role and I do not fear a new struggle. I am a fighter by birth.”