Durban - The IFP has turned against the DA and the EFF, its coalition partners in several municipalities, saying they cannot be trusted to run the country.
This came as the battle for KwaZulu-Natal - a stronghold of the ANC - intensified, with President Cyril Ramaphosa and EFF leader Julius Malema canvassing for votes in the province on Wednesday.
The IFP’s outgoing leader, Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi, while launching the party provincial manifesto in Pietermaritzburg on Wednesday, said the ANC has crippled the country with corruption, the DA is focused on painting a doom and gloom picture of the country, while the EFF is running a divisive campaign using the frustrations of the country’s populace - and none can be entrusted with running the country.
Buthelezi said the IFP is the only viable choice.
“The alternatives seem unattractive. The two biggest opposition parties have flaws that make them the wrong choice for South Africa. The one is wholly focused on doom and gloom, focused on the problems, rather than solutions. The other is capitalising on your anger. They are stirring the frustration we all feel, but at the cost of social cohesion. They are pitting South Africans against one another.”
Buthelezi focused on the ruling party’s failure in the provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, where the Msunduzi municipality had to be placed under administration as a result of alleged rampant corruption that has seen it accruing R3billion in bad debt.
“Within the space of just 10 years, the ruling party has mismanaged Msunduzi Municipality to such an extent that it has been placed under administration twice,” Buthelezi said.
Ramaphosa, meanwhile, promised community members of rural northern KZN that if they vote ANC, his government will use the next five years preparing their children for the fourth industrial revolution.
Ramaphosa officially opened the new Ingweni Phaphama, Lembe and Enhlanhleni primary schools in Dann-hauser. “I want to remind you that on May 8, you should go out to vote so that our government can give our children the best education in the world,” Ramaphosa said.
ANC provincial chairperson, Sihle Zikalala, said people should vote for the ANC so their lives would continue to improve. “There was a white government which oppressed us and there was KwaZulu government under Umntwana (Buthelezi) and they all didn’t do anything for us.”