IFP’s war on Blade

inlsa

Blade Nzimande

The IFP had warned the SA Communist Party not to drag the IFP into the internal battles of the ANC, the party said in a strong statement issued yesterday. The statement was in response to a statement issued by SACP spokesman Maleseka Maleka, in which he accused the IFP president of having claimed that all Zulus were members of Inkatha.

Maleka said this when he was defending the SACP general secretary, Dr Blade Nzimande, from accusations of previous association with the IFP.

IFP deputy national spokeman Joshua Mazibuko said: “The IFP takes strong exception to Mr Maleseka Maleka peddling a lie against our president, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and our organisation, just because he is desperate to save the political life of his master.

“It is a lie to say that Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi ever claimed that all Zulus were members of Inkatha. I urge the media to demand irrefutable evidence from Maleka to support his utterances or to issue a public apology to our president and the IFP.

“Again Maleka is on record in the electronic media accusing Inkatha of having hands that are dripping with blood. This is an insult to more than 20 000 of Inkatha members and about 400 of our leaders who lost their lives in that tragic black-on-black low-intensity civil war that engulfed our country in the ’80s and the ’90s. Does Maleka suggest that all these IFP members died at the hands of their comrades in Inkatha?

“History knows that it was the ANC-SACP alliance that rejected the non-violent struggle and paraded violence as the only route to liberation. It was the ANC-SACP alliance that introduced the people’s war and the notion of ‘making the country ungovernable’, which led to the country going up in flames and to such gruesome forms of death as the necklace.

“It was one ANC-SACP aligned leader who proclaimed that they were going to liberate South Africa using ‘boxes of matches’.

“Many people died at the hands of the ANC-SACP aligned so-called people’s courts. It was the ANC-SACP alliance which broadcast messages through Radio Freedom to the effect that Prince Buthelezi, Inkatha, councillors, traditional leaders and all who did not toe the line were part of enemy structures; thus urging people to take up arms against them. It was the ANC-SACP-alliance partner Nactu which referred to the prince as the ‘snake that was poisoning the people of South Africa’, which had to be ‘hit on the head’.

“Maleka must not drag the IFP into the internal ANC battles, which threaten the future of his general secretary. His duty is to convince his comrades within the ANC about Dr Blade Nzimande’s often-questioned struggle credentials,” he concluded.