The relationship between the ANC and the NFP has almost reached breaking point after a statement labelled the NFP the “soon-to-die party”.
|||Durban - The relationship between the ANC and the National Freedom Party (NFP) has almost reached breaking point after ANC provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala issued a statement labelling the NFP the “soon-to-die party”, which “has nothing in common with the ANC”.
Both parties had previously maintained they had a healthy relationship, despite ongoing battles between councillors in the province’s hung municipalities.
However, Zikalala’s statement seems to be evidence of serious differences between the parties, which formed coalitions against the IFP to rule 19 hung municipalities after the 2011 local government elections.
The latest trouble started when NFP president Zanele Magwaza-Msibi issued a statement this weekend claiming her party had been joined by more than 1 200 members from the ANC and IFP in Nkandla and Sikhawini in Empangeni.
“We regard this statement as nothing but hogwash informed by opportunistic paranoia and desperate efforts by its president Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi to get media coverage. There is no right-minded member who can leave the ANC to join a soon-to-die party,” read Zikalala’s statement.
The ANC described the NFP as a fledgling organisation, desperate to position itself as different from the IFP.
“It has nothing in common with the ANC... it resembles the behaviour, conduct and practices of the IFP.
“This conduct of Mrs Magwaza-Msibi clearly demonstrates that she sees the people as nothing more than a political market. We challenge her to give us names, ANC membership numbers and positions those people held in the ANC,” read the statement.
“We advise the NFP to spend more time solving its internal squabbles and consider how it wants to position itself.”
He said that failure to do that would make it like other parties that were founded out of media sound bites only to collapse in a few months.
But NFP national organiser Bonga Nzuza said the ANC was bitter because the NFP was growing.
“The truth is that the ANC would never be happy when we are growing at their expense. We are losing by-elections because the ANC and IFP are busing people to polling stations,” he said.
The Mercury