On Sunday, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) will unveil its manifesto for the 2024 election at KwaZulu-Natal’s Moses Mabhida Stadium.
The stadium’s 56 000 seats will be used to gauge the party’s strength ahead of the general election on May 29.
KwaZulu-Natal is home territory for the IFP. As a result, comparisons with the African National Congress (ANC) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who both had near-maximum turnout for the launch of their manifestos here in February, are inevitable.
Additionally, this will be the IFP’s first election without its founding president, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who passed away in September of last year at the age of 95. Thus, the party’s performance in this election will provide more light on its prospects for future elections.
A Political Party Evolved From a “Cultural Movement”
Known as Inkatha yeNkululeko yeSizwe, a “national cultural liberation movement” (Kgare ya Tokoloho ya Setjhaba), “Inkatha” was established at KwaZimela on March 21, 1975.
On July 14, 1990, “Inkatha,” renamed the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), was relaunched following the 1990 lifting of the ban on political parties, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the African National Congress (ANC). The organization also accepted supporters who were not Zulu for the first time in its existence.
When the IFP was launched, it had “four great tasks” mentioned. These were the following:
Create a society that is free, open, racial-neutral, equal opportunity, and peaceful while maintaining democratic principles.
Take on “the real enemies of the people,” including hunger and poverty.
Transfer the nation’s wealth “to the benefit of all.”
Maintain a society that is peaceful and stable.
One week following the declaration, the party brought in famous marketing consultant David Kingsley to help the IFP make the leap from a cultural organization to a legitimate political party in order to get support.
The IFP, or Inkatha, has only had two presidents since its founding: Velenkosi Hlabisa, who took over as leader five years ago, and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who presided over the organization from 1975 to 2019.
The IFP views itself as a conservative liberal-democratic party that supports free market and pro-capitalist ideologies.
The majority of IFP loyalty is found in rural areas, primarily in KwaZulu-Natal (90%) and Gauteng (9%).
Monitoring the Electoral Trajectory of the IFP
Seven days prior to the poll, the IFP chose to run in the historic 1994 general election, yet the party nevertheless received over two million votes nationwide. Additionally, unlike other parties, this outcome was achieved without the luxury of deploying billboards, posters, and other voter-gathering tools throughout the campaign.
With two million votes, the IFP was able to secure 43 seats in the National Assembly, or about 11% of the total national vote. With 1.8 million votes, it also secured KwaZulu-Natal’s political dominance in the 1994 election.
Up until 2004, this electoral domination would hold true. But since its impressive performance in the 1994 election, the IFP has been steadily losing ground. From 1994 to 2014, the IFP suffered a total of 1,616,440 vote losses.
Still, with 686 817 votes lost in a single nationwide poll in 1999, the IFP suffered its biggest vote loss to date. Between the 2009 and 2014 elections, the party lost an additional 415,541 votes.
Naturally, a number of explanations were offered for the party’s persistent poor performance in between elections, the most important of them being the election of ANC president Jacob Zuma before to the 2009 vote.
For instance, the ANC gained an extra +769 833 national votes—a 7 percentage point increase—between the polls conducted in 2004 and 2009. However, the ANC saw a 41 percentage point increase in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial election, garnering +904 693 more votes than in 2004. In contrast, the IFP experienced a loss in its vote share of over 240 000 votes on the national ballot (a decrease of 33 percentage points) and 229 240 votes on the provincial ballot (a decrease of 29 percentage points).
Although the ANC’s 2009 vote total was impacted by the “Zuma factor,” the IFP’s muted losses do not entirely account for the leftover votes.
A Fresh Internal Threat
In the 2014 general election, the National Freedom Party (NFP), a breakaway party led by former IFP chairperson Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi, made the IFP’s electoral problems worse.
The NFP gained six seats (1.57%) in the National Assembly and 288 742 votes from the IFP in the national election. The NFP garnered a commendable +280 425 votes in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial election, which translates to slightly more than 7% of the vote and six seats.
The DA embarrassingly gained official opposition status over the IFP. Since 1994, this was the IFP’s lowest electoral performance.
However, this new internal threat did not emerge in 2014. The 2011 municipal elections coincided with the formation of the breakaway party, which marked the beginning of the NFP assault.
kaMagwaza’s party stole 822,990 votes (ward, PR & DC) from the IFP in the 2011 local government election, translating to 11.21% and 227 seats. The NFP won eight of the fifteen available council seats (51.91%) in eDumbe [Paulpietersburg], and 19 of the 42 council seats (44.31%) in Nongoma. With 31.82% of the vote, the NFP gained 4 of the 14 council seats in Zululand. Fortunately for the IFP, the NFP’s problems provided a reprieve in 2016 when party leaders failed to provide the Electoral Commission with the required election-related paperwork, so excluding the NFP from several towns. Only two seats were won by the NFP in the 2016 election.
The sole gain in the party’s vote percentage occurred in the general election of 2019. Zuma’s ouster from the presidency and the NFP’s near-collapse were contributing factors in this.
For the 2024 election, the KwaZulu-Natal battleground has changed.
The ANC, IFP, DA, EFF, and NFP are the five main contenders in KwaZulu-Natal politics heading into the 2024 national and local elections. Since its foundation on December 16, 2023, Zuma’s Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party has been causing the ANC and other parties enormous issues.
MK was able to divide the vote in Abaqulusi and uPhongolo in two recent by-elections, which made it easier for the IFP to win in wards 8 and 2, respectively. Its first by-election outside of KwaZulu-Natal had a similar outcome as it once more divided ANC support in Mpumalanga.
It appears that MK’s goal is to split the vote, push the ANC below an electoral majority, and therefore impose its kingmaker status on the party that receives the most votes rather than completely overthrow the ANC.
In that regard, MK is a valuable ally for opposition parties like as the DA, EFF, and IFP. Other parties stand to gain if the ANC is weak.
This is a weapon that the IFP must use, particularly in a province where the majority of people support it.
Parties such as the IFP must take full advantage of this weakness in the ANC’s electoral shield between now and the May 29 election by making appeals to KwaZulu-Natal’s 5.7 million registered voters.
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