Parliamentary veteran and former chairperson of the watchdog standing committee on public accounts Gavin Woods has crossed the floor from the Inkatha Freedom Party to the National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) led by Ziba Jiyane.
Jiyane recently resigned as national chairperson of Inkatha after he questioned the dictatorial style of the party leadership under Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He formed Nadeco in June.
Woods is expected to be joined by two — possibly three colleagues — from the IFP on Tuesday afternoon. It was also announced that Len Joubert, also of Inkatha, had joined the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).
Only one more MP is needed to reach the 10% threshold required for Woods and his former colleagues to defect and keep their seats. The IFP had 28 seats and three are needed to cross to reach the threshold in terms of the defection legislation. Their political destination is not governed by the law — and they may join different political parties.
Woods resigned as chairperson of the standing committee after several of his interventions to focus on South Africa’s controversial arms deal were spurned by the ruling ANC. His position as chairperson was taken by Francois Beukman, who was then a New National Party MP. Beukman formerly joined the ANC last week.
Also last week Nadeco got its first representative — in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature when the Reverend Hawu Mbatha, former legislature leader of the African Christian Democratic Party joined the new party.
Jiyane’s party is also taking on the IFP in Ulundi — long the political capital of the party — in a municipal by-election on Wednesday. Chief Buthelezi’s son, Tutu, is standing for the local ratepayers organisation against the IFP. He is backed by Nadeco.
Buthelezi recently apologised to Woods for suggesting that he had only retained his position as a Member of Parliament because of his physical disability. Woods, who had polio, recently had part of his right led removed.
Woods stirred up a hornet’s nest in the IFP after he provided the parliamentary caucus with a report — known as the Woods document — on how to reverse the declining trends suffered by his party. Buthelezi ordered that the document be shredded and should not get into the hands of the media.
Relations are understood not to have been good even though Buthelezi’s spokesperson belatedly described Woods as ”a gifted public representative and a courageous man with a first-class intellect”.
This followed a blizzard of criticism from leaders in the disabled community.
Woods has been an MP for the IFP since 1994. He previously ran the party’s think tank, the Inkatha Institute. He was also the party’s finance spokesperson. – I-Net Bridge