By Celani Sikhakhane
- The NFP was telling local branches to pay the Electoral Commission themselves. Now, only the party’s Treasurer-General will pay, for everyone.
- The party has also removed candidates who were fraudulently registered in uMlalazi and uMzumbe, while a separate court case over its leadership still threatens its place on the ballot.
The National Freedom Party has changed how it pays the Electoral Commission (IEC) to take part in the upcoming local government elections. Instead of each district office paying its own share out of its own pocket, only one person, the party’s Treasurer-General, will now pay for the whole party.
The change comes after anger inside the party over an earlier instruction telling districts to pay from their own funds. Sources who asked not to be named told Scrolla.Africa the instruction had come from NFP President Ivan Barnes.
“There’s a lot of frustration taking place within the organisation, because we have now been told that as districts, we should pay for these upcoming elections. We are confused, because the only person who declared himself as the finance signatory of the NFP is the President himself. How are we going to pay when we don’t have funds for ourselves? I guess they want the party to suffer the same crisis as the 2016 local government elections, when we didn’t contest because it was discovered at the eleventh hour that our then Treasurer-General never paid for the NFP to take part,” a source said.
The party is also dealing with a separate problem.
Some candidates were registered with the IEC under the NFP’s name in KwaZulu-Natal, including in uMlalazi and uMzumbe, without the party’s knowledge. Barnes has since asked the IEC to remove those names. Scrolla.Africa has seen their reference numbers.
NFP Secretary-General Sunset Bheki Xaba told Scrolla.Africa on Friday that only the Treasurer-General now handles payments to the IEC.
“So there is no district that will be paying to contest the election, because this is a centralised process managed by the accounting officer, who happens to be the Treasurer-General. On the issue of those fraudulently submitted as NFP candidates, the matter has been dealt with, and the IEC has since removed them, after we found out they were made our candidates without the knowledge of the leadership,” Xaba said.
These money problems are not the party’s only worry.
The Electoral Commission has been waiting on a court ruling over a leadership dispute inside the NFP, a ruling that will decide whether the party can even take part in this year’s elections at all. That dispute is linked to the party’s earlier removal of KZN chairperson Mbali Shinga, who is fighting her removal in court.
Xaba himself only became Secretary-General after his predecessor, Teddy Thwala, was removed from the position.
Pictured above: The National Freedom Party has changed how it pays to take part in the local government elections.
Image source: X
