I am delighted to be here with you today. I would to thank you for the warm welcome you have given me.

These elections provide an opportunity for the people of South Africa to choose a new direction; a fresh start. There is a real chance of a new beginning. These elections provide an opportunity to elect new political leaders who want to serve and not be served.

I bring you a simple message today: now is the time to stand and be counted. Do not become a victim of the system. Democracy empowers you with the right to change who governs you.        

Today corruption permeates every level of public life in South Africa. Along many successes of our transformation runs a parallel story of corrupt elected representatives and government officials.

The IFP notes that the ruling party has repeatedly condemned corruption verbally, but remains non-committal in practice.

The IFP, on the contrary, has pledged in its 2006 local government election manifesto to introduce procedures that will bring corrupt councilors to justice. Our response to corrupt councilors will be their expulsion.

The IFP wonders why a party so obsessed with intervention and regulation as the ANC should remain silent on graft. This government has its finger stuck in just about every other pie, so why not act against the culture of corruption?

The ANC is determined to win more power at the expense of the opposition parties under the guise of seeking consensus across the South African society. The real motivation is to diminish the opposition’s oversight role in exposing government corruption.

What we see also in the ANC today is a ruling party that is torn between flaunting its large majority and its failure to accept responsibility for much of its legacy. You can see the result of this all around you: crumbling RDP homes, poor sanitation; unsafe roads; spiraling crime; an unchecked HIV/AIDS epidemic; a lack of clinics and indifferent service providers.

Yet the ANC likes to interpret its large majority as evidence that it represents broad consensus across South Africa.

But at the same time, the ruling party fails to acknowledge its obvious failures in service delivery that are being exposed by riot protests in ANC-controlled municipalities across the country.

Please note that such protests have been conspicuously concentrated in ANC-led councils.

We thank the Lord that so far we have no protests against poor service delivery have taken place in any IFP-controlled Municipality. Similarly, no IFP Councilor has been convicted for fraud or corruption.

It is now time – twelve years into ANC rule – for the majority party to accept responsibility for the unflattering parts of its legacy such as failure to build enough houses, lack of sanitation and related infrastructure and urban decay.

Government spin does not end there. Former ANC Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa said during a recent election campaign address that South Africa’s opposition parties, including the IFP, have “no history” and “no legitimacy”.

Phosa’s dislike of opposition parties has a long history and is legitimate enough. But so are South Africa’s opposition parties.

The IFP, for one, has a proven track-record of service delivery, spanning the past 30 years, under the former KwaZulu administration and in most of KwaZulu-Natal’s municipalities post-1994.

The ANC cannot say the same thing for itself. All it can offer us today, after twelve years in government, is yet another plan to make that government work.

All this vague rhetoric is supported by an even more vague promise that this time ANC councilors will behave. And if they don’t? They will stay anyway.

The IFP is blowing the whistle to stop all this. We are here to pick up the pieces. We are prepared to govern. We are seeking victory not just in IFP wards and IFP municipalities, but a victory for IFP values.

I also appeal to you today: please do not give your vote to NADECO. Dr Ziba Jiyane has spun the idea that NADECO is IFP lite. Jiyane optimistically adopted the eagle as NADECO’s symbol. And then his supporters waited with bated breath as the media gleefully predicted the IFP’s demise. And they waited…and they waited….and they waited!

Yet since its foundation, NADECO has been a monumental flop. The eagle never landed or even took off. Instead, all we got was a dead parrot. But we must not allow this dead parrot to take away votes from the IFP and let the ANC into local government through the back door. A vote for NADECO is a wasted vote. A vote for NADECO is a vote for the ANC. 

Do not let this happen in Richards Bay.

Today I bring you a message of hope. I present to you our Local Government Pledge of Honour, Service and Delivery. I urge you today to vote for the IFP so that we can build a better South Africa. All we ask for is a chance to serve. The IFP is coming home.