Africa-Press – South-Africa. The IFP and the DA in KwaZulu-Natal have inked an agreement that formalises their “common goal” to unseat the ANC in the province during next year’s elections.
The two parties agreed to a “historic” service delivery pact, which they’ve branded as the provincial ANC’s worst nightmare.
“This agreement which has been six months in the making and follows from our successful cooperation in by-elections to win wards from the ANC, will ensure that where each party holds seats in a hung municipality, we will work together to improve service delivery and better the lives of residents,” they said in a joint statement signed by IFP provincial chairperson Thami Ntuli and his DA counterpart Dean Macpherson.
The DA has insisted that it will still hold the IFP to account where it governs.
The DA has raised questions about a number of incidents involving transgressions by IFP mayors in the province, as well as questions of maladministration.
Newcastle Mayor Xolani Dube’s bodyguards shot three people during a protest related to service delivery in mid-May, and were also allegedly involved in another shooting a few weeks earlier.
A special committee of the Abaqulusi municipality found against Abaqulusi councillor and former mayor Mncedisi Maphisa after claims of sexual harassment were made against him by his subordinates.
The mayor of uThukela, Prince Ntandoyenkosi Shabalala, at one point, had 12 bodyguards, at a cost of R10 million.
The DA in uThukela last month slammed the IFP for poor governance after it had to return R40 million of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant to National Treasury.
Quizzed about how the IFP was dealing with these issues as they went into the deal with the DA, Ntuli said: “The IFP is one party that is able to deal with any wrongdoers. I think historically, we’ve been one party that has been able to redeploy our leaders for various reasons. Where there is evidence of wrongdoing, we never hesitate dealing with such.”
‘Common goal’
Asked whether the agreement didn’t compromise the IFP’s identity, Ntuli said: “We’ll be campaigning as the IFP. We’ll have our own manifesto. And this [agreement] is about the current municipalities [where the IFP and DA are in coalition].”
KwaZulu-Natal DA leader Francois Rodgers said the cooperation agreement would address and “arrest” challenges in municipalities.
“The DA will always remain with its identity. Our common task here between the two parties is to remove the ANC from power. There is no other common goal,” he added.
He said the pact could lead to a further engagement with the IFP, “with 2024 in mind”.
“This is almost an engagement process. Lobola hasn’t been paid yet. There is no ‘vula mlomo’ [Nguni languages reference to the proposer’s request for blessings from the families to marry the other person] – not yet,” Rodgers said.
“But it affords us the opportunity to understand each other, the challenges, and how we’re going to address those challenges in order to achieve our ultimate objective: to remove the ANC from power.”
Should any impasse not be resolved, issues would be escalated to a political oversight committee, made up of national leaders from both parties.
Ntuli said the two parties were aware that “time is of the essence” ahead of the elections.
“Now is the time to deliver to the people of KwaZulu-Natal. We dare not fail them,” he added.
Macpherson revealed that the two parties had burned the midnight oil to reach consensus on the modalities of the agreement.
Macpherson said the deal was built on “consensus”.
“There is no big brother approach to this. We want to find each other. That’s why it took so long to get to this point,” he said.
“Ziyakhala,” was all Rodgers said about ANC provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo at the tail end of the conference.
The Zulu reference describes a situation when one is going through a lot or when bad things are about to happen.
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