By Celani Sikhakhane
Sbu Ndebele, a former ANC premier of KwaZulu-Natal, said when the party entered the first post-apartheid government in KZN in 1995, the IFP gave them cabinet posts that were not taken seriously.
Ndebele revealed this during an interview on the ANC KZN podcast shared on the ANC WhatsApp group.
He said he laughed when the late Dr Frank Mdlalose, the then IFP premier, appointed the party to the departments of transport and traffic, water affairs, and forestry.
“At that time, we could not really bargain because we had received only 32% of the votes,” he said. “We were entitled to only three cabinet portfolios. It was transport and traffic, water affairs, and the Department of Forestry.
“Those were the portfolios normally given to a person that you don’t know what to do with. [It’s as if they said] ‘Let me just give him something’. I remember when they said ‘Sbu Ndebele: transport, roads and traffic’. I laughed,” said Ndebele.
Ndebele said the annual budget of his department was only R8-million.
After his appointment, he decided to show everyone that, in fact, it is not the wealth of the country that builds roads, but roads that build the wealth of the country.
Ndebele said the department turned things around, but that when they started, there were areas of the province that were still as they were when King Shaka passed away.
He said they wanted to make sure when King Shaka was resurrected with the likes of Inkosi Langalibalele Dube, they would see the change.
Ndebele was the first KZN MEC for Transport from 1995 until 2004 when he took over the premiership after the ANC defeated the IFP in the 2004 general elections.
History repeated itself in KZN’s new government of provincial unity when the IFP gave the ANC the transport department portfolio, led by MEC Siboniso Duma.
Pictured above: The first KZN MEC for Transport Sbu Ndebele.
Image source: X
