11th August 2008

The IFP is disappointed to find that the new KwaZulu Natal ANC leader Dr Zweli Mkhize's olive branch extended to the Official Opposition in the province is a mere election campaign tactic to fool the public ahead of the 2009 election.

"The IFP sincerely hoped that the relationship between the two largest political parties in KwaZulu Natal would normalise under Dr Mkhize who recently replaced the confrontational former ANC provincial leader Sibusiso Ndebele," said Leader of the Official Opposition Dr Lionel Mtshali. 

Dr Mtshali, together with two other IFP members of the KwaZulu Natal Provincial Parliament, Inkosi Bonga Mdletshe and Lindani Mncwango, has just been served summonses by the Speaker to appear before a disciplinary committee on trumped-up charges of un-parliamentary behaviour.

"Since 2004 the ruling party has twisted every rule in the book to destabilise Parliament and undermine the oversight capacity of the Official Opposition. This practice appears to be culminating in the run-up to the 2009 election despite Dr Mkhize's offer of closer co-operation between the two parties," said Dr Mtshali. 

 The IFP has long observed a tendency in the ruling party to provoke new hostilities behind a smokescreen of closer co-operation. "It has fallen to the IFP alone to strive for a standard working relationship between the two major political forces," said Dr Mtshali.  

The ANC, the IFP contends, has also gone full steam ahead with both controversial issues that have recently angered the Official Opposition, namely the renaming of public spaces in Durban and the distribution of the school history textbook that portrays IFP President Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi in a negative light.  

The IFP maintains that Dr Mtshali's charge of misleading Parliament, in particular, is designed to divert attention from the failure on the part of the ruling party to deliver government services ahead of the 2009 elections.
 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Dr Lionel Mtshali, 083 256 4902