The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has asked all its elected members in provincial legislatures and Parliament to lodge letters of resignation, the Mercury reported on Monday.
It said this was aimed at rooting out ”dead wood”, and the letters would only be activated in cases where representatives had failed to perform.
Secretary general Musa Zondi confirmed the move when he was interviewed after the party’s 31st annual conference in Ulundi on Sunday.
He indicated the party sought to remove any representative considered to be not pulling their weight by merely lodging the signed letter of resignation with the Speaker concerned.
The letters, to be lodged with party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, meant the party would not have to face litigation from those removed.
The IFP has 23 MPs in the National Assembly, 27 provincial ministers in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature and two provincial ministers in the Gauteng legislature.
The move apparently excluded Buthelezi, who offered to resign his position at a special congress in April after the party’s poor show in the local government elections on March 1.
In his address to the conference, Buthelezi said he was pleased by the ”courage and dedication” of members who had signed.
”I have their written resignations right here in my briefcase. All of them have done what I did and placed their political heads under the guillotine blade,” he said.
He said he was not saying that any heads should roll as he believed in ”peaceful and bloodless revolutions”.
”I am satisfied that most of our elected political representatives are up to the new tasks they will have to perform,” Buthelezi said.
”However, I also know that some of them are not pulling their weight and are not working as hard as I do, and may need to have some sobering wake-up calls.” — Sapa