Celani Sikhakhane
The popularity of former president Jacob Zuma is no longer enough to give the Inkatha Freedom Party sleepless nights about losing his hometown of Nkandla.
The IFP have ruled Nkandla for over 20 years and its leaders believe that the upcoming local government elections will prove that Nkandla is still their stronghold.
Zuma has tried over years to use his charm to help the ANC to win Nkandla but it never worked. He even gave Christmas gifts every December to the people of Nkandla who attend his events in huge numbers.
But when it’s election time, they vote IFP.
In the 2011 local government elections, the ANC managed to win the Nkandla municipality through a coalition with the NFP, a splinter group of the IFP which formed its own party.
That coalition didn’t last long, after its then mayor, Zandile Mncadi Mpanza, was removed through a vote of no confidence.
IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa told Scrolla.Africa that Zuma’s presence in Nkandla is no longer a threat to the IFP.
“As the IFP we worked very hard to show the people of Nkandla, including Zuma, that we are the party they should trust. Whether Zuma is popular or not, to us it does not matter because we have managed to win elections in Nkandla for the past 20 years,” said Hlabisa.
The ANC have tried to spend more of their resources so that the party could win Nkandla but they never succeeded.
In 2015 they proposed the dissolvement of Nkandla municipality so that it could be merged with uMhlathuze municipality and become a larger metropolitan municipality. But the then incumbent cooperative governance and traditional affairs minister Pravin Gordhan rejected that proposal.
In 2016 David Everat from Wits University published a survey which found that Zuma’s mistakes were the main reasons the ANC lost support in Nkandla.
