Inkatha Freedom Party Ingwe municipality mayor Innocent Miya and three councillors from nearby Ubuhlebezwe municipality have defected to Ziba Jiyane’s National Democratic Convention (Nadeco).
Miya, according to Nadeco spokesperson Linda Hlongwa MPL, has been mayor of Ingwe since 2000. She also said three Ubuhlebezwe councillors have announced their resignations from the IFP — Beryl Marais, BP Molunga and Mzunywa Myeza. Both councils are in the Natal Midlands area of KwaZulu-Natal.
The mayor and the three councillors will be welcomed into Nadeco at the official launch of the party’s manifesto at Cato Manor, Durban, on January 29, she said.
The launch will be led by Jiyane, a former national chairperson of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s IFP. Nadeco was formed last year after four MPs and three members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature joined the party.
Meanwhile, IFP deputy national chairperson Velaphi Ndlovu on Wednesday confirmed that the Ingwe mayor and the three councillors have left the IFP.
In a statement, Ndlovu said: “These defections come as no surprise to us. Both mayor Miya and councillor Myeza failed to garner enough support from IFP structures to become candidates-elect in the upcoming local government elections and do not appear on our local government election candidate lists.
“It appears, therefore, that they have followed the path of ‘career politicians’ and have embarked on party hopping, hoping to secure power without grassroots support.
“Any justification they might present for their change of political heart is nullified by this fact and proof that they are just disgruntled individuals attempting to retain power and position, that those who elected them in the first place felt they did not deserve the second time around.”
But Nadeco’s John Aulsbrooke, a KwaZulu-Natal MPL who crossed the floor from the IFP during the defection window in 2005, said: “They had got to say something. They [the IFP] refuse to accept the fact that there has been a split. They [the councillors] are part of the split.”
While the councilors had been “trapped” in the IFP as sitting councillors, the upcoming March 1 council elections gave them the opportunity to “get out”.
Aulsbrooke said Nadeco is standing in all KwaZulu-Natal municipalities and in just about every ward in the province. It is also standing in Mpumalanga, Gauteng — including its three metro councils — and areas of the Free State and Eastern Cape. — I-Net Bridge