Last hope for IFP?

The IFP goes to its 32nd annual general conference on Saturday to take stock of its declining fortunes and formulate a turnaround strategy to wrest back control of KwaZulu-Natal in the 2009 general elections.

The conference is important for party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is battling to stifle debate over the succession debacle in his party amid hushed calls by reformists in the youth wing, the IFP Youth Brigade, for the establishment of a position of deputy president.

Buthelezi, who has led the party since 1975, is determined to continue to cling to power, while claiming to be committed to strengthening internal democracy.

The party finds itself in a political wilderness for the first time, having lost all its seats in the national Cabinet. It also lost control of KwaZulu-Natal and 20 municipalities to the ANC in last year’s municipal elections.

The conference at Emandleni FET college in Ulundi could be a last-ditch opportunity for the party to arrest the slide.

The IFP is faced with the challenge of appealing to young and urban voters without losing support among rural voters and Zulu traditionalists.

This week it issued two statements dismissing reports that its youth wing is seeking to propose a discussion about a succession road map ahead of Buthelezi’s end of term in 2009.

On Thursday, national chairperson Zanele Magwaza-Msibi issued a statement saying she was not contesting the position of deputy president adding that there was ‘no vacancy in the president’s office”.

Reformists have suggested Magwaza-Msibi, national organiser Albert Mncwango and national secretary Reverend Musa Zondi as the likely contenders.

Traditionalists, who will dominate the 3 000-strong delegation, want the conference to be limited to devising survival strategies and attracting ‘sophisticated urban voters” in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, where the party has consistently shed the most support.

The slide

The IFP now controls 36 of 61 municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, the majority of which are rural, cash-strapped municipalities to the north of the uThukela River.

At the height of its popularity after the 1994 and 1999 elections the IFP controlled KwaZulu-Natal.

The party had representation in Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet and during President Thabo Mbeki’s first term.

Buthelezi, emerging from being prime minister of the KwaZulu government, was a whisker away from being the deputy president of democratic South Africa when Mbeki offered him the position in 1999. He turned down the offer because Mbeki wanted the IFP to relinquish the premiership of KwaZulu-Natal to the ANC.

In 2002 the IFP controlled KwaZulu-Natal and 51 of its 61 municipalities. Now it has been reduced to an insignificant force in the backwaters of the province and has been bad-mouthed by the ANC as fighting against development and democratisation in amaKhosi areas.

Political manoeuvres by the ANC and blunders by the IFP have brought it to its current political cul-de-sac.

Its influence in KwaZulu-Natal was first reduced by the ANC’s successful neutralisation of King Goodwill Zwelithini, whose symbolic support for Buthelezi earned the IFP leader loyalty from traditional leaders and Zulu traditionalists. The ANC-led government now pays R2-million for King Zwelithini’s annual reed dance festival and forks out R37-million to support him.

The IFP’s insistence during its two terms in the KwaZulu-Natal premiership that Ulundi be the provincial capital instead of Pietermaritzburg did not go down well with urban voters. Its ‘coalition for change” election strategy with the DA, devised to form a bulwark against ANC dominance in the province ahead of the 2004 general elections, was rejected by the electorate.

The election of Ziba Jiyane to the position of national chair humiliated the traditional party bosses.

Jiyane served a year and the party imploded when he took a large chunk of progressive supporters from the powerful eThekwini region to form the now-ailing Nadeco.

The new splinter party poached four MPs and three MPLs from the IFP during the 2005 floor-crossing window and reduced the IFP’s fortunes during the 2006 municipal elections.

At the height of this exodus IFP stalwart and Buthelezi’s lifelong friend, former premier Frank Mdlalose, who founded the 31-year-old party with Buthelezi, defected to Nadeco.

The party’s second premier of KwaZulu-Natal, Ben Ngubane, had earlier defected to the ANC.

The IFP now has only one councillor in the 11-member executive committee of the R15-billion eThekwini municipality.

KwaZulu-Natal Minister for Local Government Mike Mabuyakhulu’s decision in 2005 to disband the council of the IFP-controlled Abaqulusi municipality in Vryheid highlighted problems in IFP-ruled local councils. Mabuyakhulu argued that political infighting in the municipality was threatening to derail service delivery.

Survival strategy

Zondi said there were no discussion documents on the table ahead of this weekend’s conference, adding that Buthelezi would set the tone.

‘The president’s report — which is a complete political analysis of the party, its strategies, its role in society and its standing in the political landscape — sets the tone for the debate in the conference.

‘Until he has given that report one would not be able to foretell the issues up for discussion.”

He said the party would discuss strategies to reclaim the province.

‘We will discuss in detail the resolution of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial conference, where delegates charged the provincial leadership with formulating strategies to wrest control of the province during the 2009 elections.”

Buthelezi’s future

Buthelezi’s popularity in KwaZulu-Natal is threatened by Jacob Zuma’s following. Zuma is seen by IFP supporters and Zulu traditionalists as the new conduit of Zulu traditionalism.

With Buthelezi out of the national Cabinet and his influence declining, he is seen as yesterday’s man.

This week Buthelezi denied he was clinging to power: ‘As far as the issue of succession in the IFP is concerned you know that I offered my resignation in 2004 and that I was, unfortunately for me, prevailed upon by all the delegates to continue leading. I promised to do so, provided my health allowed me to continue to do so. Then again last year certain individual journalists kept on suggesting that I should now retire and make way for someone younger than myself. I called a special conference on April 8 2006 in Durban at which I again offered to resign. I was again prevailed upon by all the delegates to continue. I again relented under protest and my term expires in 2009. But this is not to say if the party wants me to step down I would not do so, even if my term has not expired.”

He added: ‘The conferences we have are dominated by young people. They have the right to say they now want me to step down at anytime, and I shall do so.”

The only indication of his determination to cling to power can be found in an October 2004 letter to The Mercury denouncing the opinion expressed by columnist Barney Mthombothi that it is time for him to ‘call it quits”.

Buthelezi said: ‘A true leader does not take his leave when his party is going through turbulent seas. They weather the storm and lead from the front. That is the test of solid leadership.”