Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has described a conflict between him and President Thabo Mbeki in the run-up to the 2004 national elections.
Speaking at the 10th anniversary dinner for law firm Eisenberg and Associates on Thursday, Buthelezi said he and Mbeki had fallen out over the issuing of immigration regulations. Buthelezi was minister of home affairs at the time.
He said the immigration regulations, which had undergone an extensive public-participation process, ”were indeed the greatest exercise of participatory democracy in our country known to me”.
However, after Buthelezi issued them on March 8 2004, he said Mbeki had intervened to prevent the regulations from coming into force. The president’s view was that the regulations were invalid because they had not gone through a Cabinet approval process.
There was a court case over the matter, and the regulations never came into force. New regulations were introduced by Buthelezi’s successor.
”I am not aware of any world precedent in which a president not only sued his own minister, but went so far as trying to get a cost order against him in his personal capacity,” said Buthelezi.
He said the timing of this action meant that ”mere days before the elections, the president was suing me both in my ministerial and personal capacities”.
”A few days after elections, the president chose not to invite me again to join his Cabinet, which led my party to no longer be part of a coalition government.
”Anyone may draw the conclusion they wish in respect of the connection between these two events, which are in such close proximity of time,” Buthelezi said.
On Friday, Buthelezi’s private secretary, John Cayzer, said that Buthelezi was not necessarily expressing the belief that the two events were linked, but was inviting the audience to make their own conclusions.
The current relationship between Buthelezi and Mbeki is ”cordial” and ”fine”.
Buthelezi did not, in fact, have to pay the costs of the court action because ”events took over”, Cayzer said.
Comment from the Presidency was not available on Friday afternoon. — Sapa