POLITICAL NEWS - IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi shouldn’t talk about ‘wasted years’, according to the party that broke away from his.
The National Freedom Party (NFP) has written a statement attacking the the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the party it broke away from in 2011.
The NFP accuse the IFP of “playing tribalist politics” and engaging in “populist stunts” after the latter party penned a scathing open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of being “opportunistic” in his calling the presidency of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, “nine wasted years”.
Ramaphosa didn’t say a word while serving in Zuma’s national executive, the IFP’s letter charges, and so shouldn’t talk about “nine wasted years”, because as a deputy president and an ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) member, he was complicit in them.
In response, the NFP says the IFP has been part of the government during the “nine wasted years” and so should also shoulder some of the blame.
The two parties do seem to agree, however, on the fact that Ramaphosa shouldn’t talk about “nine wasted years” as if he was wasn’t there.
The “blame shifting game by the president of the country Mr Cyril Ramaphosa to then former president Mr Jacob Zuma, will not solve the problems ordinary South Africans are facing at the moment,” the NFP statement says.
Where they differ is on whether or not it is only those in government who come from the ANC who should be taken to task, and on whether or not the last nine years can be singled out at all.
