NFP pins its hopes on talks with ANC
NFP national acting chairman Bheki Gumbi said that the party would be pursuing discussions with the ANC before committing its support.
|||Durban – The National Freedom Party’s (NFP) executive said on Monday that it had not given its members any directive on how to vote in the upcoming local government elections.
However, national acting chairman Bheki Gumbi said that the party would be pursuing discussions with the African National Congress.
“As you know we are in a coalition with the ANC in some municipalities. We will be speaking to them and asking them what are you [the ANC] going to do if we borrow you our votes,” he said.
He said the party would be seeking to have a discussion over the “terms of reference” for issuing such a directive.
He was, however, at pains to point out that votes were secret and that the party could not oblige members to vote one way or another.
“We cannot push people to vote [in a particular way]. But we are only in consultations now.”
He said that the party executive would make it known before election day on Wednesday, how it would like its members to vote.
The NFP failed to pay the Electoral Commission of South Africa the required deposit by the June 2, deadline to allow its candidates to participate in the elections, with the exception of its candidates in the Nquthu Local Municipality who paid the requisite fees themselves.
The party claimed that it was sabotaged by its former treasurer Xolani Ndlovu, but that argument failed to find a sympathetic hearing with the Electoral Court which twice ruled against its participation.
It could not immediately be confirmed whether any discussions had taken placed with the ANC, but both Super Zuma, the ANC’s provincial secretary and Sihle Zikalala, the party’s provincial chairman were both on the road campaigning on Monday. It is highly likely such negotiations would have involved at least one of the two men.
The NFP was formed when Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi, the former chairwoman of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) left the IFP three months before the previous local government elections in 2011.
In that election the NFP won some 2.4 percent of the vote nationally, breaking the IFP’s hold on many of KwaZulu-Natal’s rural municipalities. In 19 of those municipalities it governed in coalition with the African National Congress.
The party has been gripped by infighting ever since the charismatic kaMagwaza-Msibi, who is also South Africa’s deputy science and technology minister, suffered a stroke in November 2014.
She has only made one appearance at a rally where the party launched its manifesto in Vryheid earlier this year.
African News Agency