By Angela Quintal
If there was one man who had no intention of going to Ulundi on Friday for the Inkatha Freedom Party's annual conference, it was newly reinstated KwaZulu-Natal Member of Parliament Jabulani Maphalala.
Having been expelled from the party a day before the floor-crossing period began on Thursday, the Pietermaritzburg High Court ordered on Friday that he should be reinstated by party bosses.
The court granted an interim order and the matter will be finalised on September 12, three days before the floor-crossing period ends.
Maphalala, the party's acting provincial chairperson, said day he knew full well he would have to watch his back if he went to the conference, so would not attend for his own safety.
He praised the rule of law in the country, saying: "We should all be celebrating that we are not living in a banana republic".
Maphalala is constrained from defecting to another party by the 10 percent threshold rule for defections.
The IFP has 30 seats in the legislature, which would mean that two other IFP MPs would want to defect too.
Maphalala said it was early days yet.
"People take time to make decisions. I would not say nobody will make that decision," he said.
The KwaZulu-Natal Speaker's office confirmed on Friday that there were no new defections.
Only the African Communist Democratic Party has bled in the province thus far, with its provincial leader, Hawu Mbatha, crossing to the National Democratic Convention of Ziba Jiyane.
Meanwhile, the Independent Democrats was also in court on Friday in another attempt to protect its Gauteng seat held by Themba Sono, who wants to defect to his new party, the Alliance of Free Democrats.
The matter has been postponed until Wednesday in the Cape High Court.
In the meantime, Sono is barred from defecting and the ID is barred from filling the seat.
The ID terminated Sono's membership earlier this week for his failure to pay his annual R10 party membership fee.
In other floor-crossing developments, the ANC formally announced that the NNP's two Northern Cape MPs, Pieter Saaiman and Charl de Beer, had defected to it, as well as ID chief whip Ebrahim Mohammed Sulliman.
The Democratic Alliance confirmed on Friday that United Democratic Movement MP Martin Stephens had joined it in the National Assembly, bringing its total of seats in the house to 51.