In her “Chameleon tales” (September 16), Vicki Robinson quotes a Zulu myth to create and substantiate another myth — her own. Robinson is essentially right in that she has produced a tale outlining 30 years of the Inkatha Freedom Party coming to an end. Needless to say, it is a classic mix of factual inconsistencies, half-truths and outright lies, albeit, admittedly, with a new twist in the person of Dr Ziba Jiyane.
The former IFP party chairperson and current leader of the National Democratic Convention is Robinson’s undisputed hero. Her sole claim to fame is disloyalty to the IFP and its leader. Defying his ex-boss has elevated him to near-mythical status.
By the same token, Zanele Magwaza, the new party chair-person, who replaced Jiyane following a vote by the delegates of our last annual general conference, has been declared a “slavish Buthelezi loyalist”. She does not deny it. She is proud to be loyal. One would have thought that being loyal to the leadership is essential for the running of any organisation. If Robinson thinks otherwise, she is offering a recipe for anarchy that the IFP only managed to divert when it suspended Jiyane.
Jiyane therefore enters Robinson’s account of the IFP history as one of the famously “disillusioned” figures, the likes of Dr Oscar Dhlomo, Dr Frank Mdlalose and Dr Ben Ngubane. As far as I know, none of these fine gentlemen ever professed, publicly or otherwise, to be “disillusioned” with their party or to have failed to “resuscitate” it, as Robinson contends. Instead, they simply left politics for business and foreign service. This is common enough practice in the African National Congress, which is usually reported without Robinson’s striking propensity for drama.
As far as her depiction of me as a “Bantustan leader” is concerned, I can do no better than remind readers that former president and Nobel laureate, FW de Klerk, testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that it was my steadfast refusal to accept independence for KwaZulu that rendered the grand apartheid scheme of the Balkanisation of South Africa into mini-states untenable.
I was persuaded by the ANC mission-in-exile, in particular Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo, to assume the role of chief minister of KwaZulu and later to establish Inkatha as a cultural liberation movement. Throughout his long incarceration, I maintained correspondence with Nelson Mandela and consistently called for his, as well as Walter Sisulu’s and others’, release. I am not ashamed of my liberation credentials.
After liberation, my party won the 1994 and 1999 elections in KwaZulu-Natal, the country’s most populous province, and is today the country’s largest black opposition party.
It is also relevant to state that only the IFP has shed electoral support, as Robinson suggests. Even though the ANC enjoys 70% of the vote, actual votes cast (not the share of the vote) for the ANC declined sharply between the last two elections. The stark reality is that only 38% of people who are entitled to vote cast their vote for the ruling party. This has been compounded by high levels of voter apathy that are deepening the democratic deficit.
Nevertheless, the 70% of the vote translates into 100% of the power! This, of course, was bolstered by the “crosstitutes”, who stole votes given to opposition parties and joined the ranks of the ruling party over the past fortnight.
Despite the challenges we face, not least one of resources, the IFP is not a spent force as Robinson would like you to believe. We have been around for 30 years and we have accumulated impressive international credentials and vast experience in government. We are ready to share it.
Even more importantly, as I have mentioned, we remain the largest black opposition party in an encroaching one-party state. On the one hand, journalists like Robinson lament its obvious onset in South Africa under the ANC. On the other, they dash the hopes of any credible opposition party that strives to challenge it. I wish they would make up their minds.
The timeless values of self-help and self-reliance, which form the basis of our philosophy, have transformed countries as diverse as Estonia, South Korea and New Zealand. The corporatist and interventionist policies championed by the ANC have ruined a considerably longer list of countries around the world.
This is the fundamental difference between the ANC and the IFP. It is the difference between what South Africa is and what it should and could be. The government’s self-congratulatory rhetoric at home is no match for independent statistics from overseas sources. These spell unmitigated failure.
I have noted with shock and disappointment that South Africa this year ranked 120th on the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) list of 177 countries. This means that South Africa has fallen 35 places on this index since 1990.
When one considers how much emphasis has been placed on human rights, democratic participation, empowerment and service delivery by the ANC government since 1994, this is a disastrous showing.
My main sin in the eyes of Robinson and others is my political longevity. I urge the self-styled democrats in the South African media establishment to stop looking beyond the obvious fact that I remain the leader of my party by popular demand.