Is the IFP SA’s comeback kid?

Can the IFP sustain its resurgence in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in the run-up to the 2024 national election?  

The province will be crucial to the electoral battle next year: it has the second-highest voting population after Gauteng, and the ANC has seen a sharp decline in its support there, from 64.5% in the 2014 provincial election (held concurrently with the national election) to 54% in the 2019 poll.  

The picture looks even worse for the ANC when one considers its share of support across the province in local government elections: from 57.8% in 2016 to 41.5% in 2021.  

The IFP, on the other hand, is proving to be the comeback kid. After controlling the province outright after the 1994 election, it lost control to the ANC a decade later. Narend Singh, chair of the IFP’s national campaigns committee, attributes this to its decision to enter into coalitions with the ANC in some areas.  

“In hindsight, one of the errors we made was letting the ANC have MEC positions,” he tells the FM. “Coalitions can be dangerous — we were being destroyed from the inside; many of our own began colluding with the ANC.” 

After that, the IFP largely fell off the electoral map, winning control of just two municipalities in 2011. The 2014 provincial election was another blow: it garnered the support of just 10.9%, against 22.4% in 2009.

By 2016, the picture had started to change, as ANC  infighting took its toll on the party’s ability to govern municipalities across the province. So, just two years after its support in KZN had tanked, the IFP rebounded to win 20.2% of the vote.

In 2019 it rebounded in the provincial election too, reaching 16.3% (from 10.9% in 2014).

But it was the 2021 local government election that really blew the lights out for the IFP — and sounded the alarm for a complacent ANC. The IFP’s support grew to 26.4%, while the ANC fell to just 41.5%, from nearly 58% five years earlier.

This rapid resurgence has bolstered the IFP’s confidence — and has deeply unsettled the ANC.

In terms of municipal governance, the IFP has improved in leaps and bounds too: from controlling just two municipalities in 2011, to 11 in 2016 and a staggering 28 of the province’s 54 in 2021, says provincial chair Thami Ntuli.  

He attributes the surge in support to continued loyalty to the IFP’s former leader and patron, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as well as its governance track record — particularly on the issue of corruption.  

We are working towards performing well, but we cannot count our chickens before they hatch

—  Thami Ntuli

Ntuli dismisses talk that the IFP is making a comeback because the president of the ANC is no longer from KZN. (Jacob Zuma’s term ended in 2017, and his proxy candidate for the elective conference that year, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, lost to Cyril Ramaphosa.)  

In December, Ramaphosa won a second term as party president, beating former KZN chair and premier Zweli Mkhize.  

But even when Zuma was in the driving seat, Ntuli says the IFP had, by 2016, started winning back support due to incessant infighting and corruption in ANC-led administrations in the province. He also points out that, throughout Zuma’s presidential term, Nkandla — Zuma’s home municipality — was controlled by the IFP.  

“So he could not even control the municipality where he lived,” he says. 

Another factor contributing to the IFP’s resurgence is the significant weakening of the National Freedom Party (NFP), an IFP splinter party founded by the late Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi in 2011.

The NFP in KZN effectively became an offshoot of the ANC, propping up the party in councils where it needed support. Since Magwaza-Msibi’s death in 2021, it has descended into chaos, with two factions wrangling for control. In Nongoma, for example — the one municipality where the NFP has some sway — its one faction supports the IFP; the other the ANC.

The IFP has had to face another contender in its quest for electoral dominance: Julius Malema’s EFF. In 2014, the newly formed party’s support in the province was at 1.9%; by 2019, that had grown to a more respectable 10%, closing in on the IFP’s 16.3%.  

At local government level, the EFF’s support stood at 3.5% in 2016, growing to 8.5% by 2021.

Ntuli says the EFF and IFP had a formal pact to work together in key municipalities in the province after the 2021 poll, but the deal fell apart after the EFF demanded the mayorship of uMhlathuze — one of the province’s largest municipalities.  

The IFP controls the municipality with the support of the DA, the second-largest party in the council.  A problem arose when the DA decided to stop working with the EFF in any council after its ill-fated informal partnership with the party in Gauteng after the 2016 elections.

This meant the IFP couldn’t hand over the mayorship to the EFF without losing the DA’s support.    

Though the EFF had some deputy mayors dotted around KZN, these positions were regarded as ceremonial rather than politically powerful. Ntuli says the EFF was eager to showcase its ability to govern. The IFP, however, wouldn’t agree, and lost a few councils as a result.  

EFF provincial spokesperson Mazwi Blose tells the FM that the IFP is not only facing off against the ANC; it will need to put in place a counteroffensive against a rising EFF presence in the province.

Blose says the party enjoys substantial support among KZN’s youth, but this hasn’t translated into votes, because many aren’t registered to vote. To remedy that, the EFF this week launched a huge voter registration drive in the province.

The EFF has played a tight tactical game too, exploiting ANC infighting by siding with the anti-Ramaphosa “radical economic transformation” faction. Its sudden growth in support can be directly linked to the RET grouping’s decline in the ANC. Still, ANC insiders believe the faction will try to pitch IFP and EFF support as “protest votes” against the Ramaphosa-led ANC come next year.

Blose is unconvinced that the IFP can sustain its growth in 2024, saying the party has little to offer the youth. Its relatively strong performance in recent by-elections is a mirage, he adds, as the party is propped up by both the DA and EFF splinter party Team Sugar SA.  

He says the DA and Team Sugar instruct their constituencies to vote for the IFP in areas they do not contest, in return for the same elsewhere. This, he says, has given the impression that the IFP’s support is surging.  

It’s an argument Ntuli dismisses outright, pointing out that this scenario has played out in just two by-elections.  

The Social Research Foundation, which conducted polling on political party support last year and this month, indicates that the IFP is definitely regaining popularity in KZN. According to the foundation’s most recent count, the party is polling at between 22% and 23.5% in the province, assuming a 66% voter turnout. The ANC, in contrast, is polling at 45%.

The IFP is set to face stiff opposition from both the ANC and the EFF in KZN in 2024. But the comeback kid of SA politics looks to be in with a chance

—  What it means:

The IFP’s support in by-elections must give many ANC leaders sleepless nights. In December, for instance, it won eThekwini’s ward 99 (in the south of Durban) off the ANC by 1,800 votes, says Singh. That, in a ward the ANC has controlled since 1994.  

“That is no coincidence or chance,” he says. “The ward is a mixed ward too, with Africans, whites and Indians. It shows that we are even expanding beyond our traditional base.”

The IFP’s by-election performance definitely shows an uptick in support. In the 24 by-elections held since 2021, it has so far won seven wards, mostly from the ANC. As the FM went to print this week, a string of by-elections were set to take place in KZN. Ntuli was confident they would go the IFP’s way.  

What previous election results show is that the IFP has historically performed better in local elections than it does at provincial and national level. Singh says 2024 is an opportunity for the party to show it now has broader support, and prove its naysayers wrong.  

“We cannot take support for granted, we will work hard and where we govern we will do it well,” he says.  

Ntuli is more measured in his assessment. 

“We are working towards performing well, but we cannot count our chickens before they hatch,” he says. “For now, taking over completely is far-fetched. We will work hard between now and then and hope for the best.” 

With just over a year to go, the IFP has its work cut out if it hopes to dethrone the ANC in KZN. And it shouldn’t expect the ruling party to roll over. Ramaphosa’s recent cabinet reshuffle was a careful exercise in keeping the provincial power barons happy — hence the retention of deadbeats such as police minister Bheki Cele and Dlamini Zuma, the minister in the presidency for women, youth & people with disabilities. 

The ANC is keenly aware just how important it is to keep KZN onside: the loss of an electoral majority in the province will pull down its rapidly eroding national support — even, perhaps, affecting its chances of governing the country outright.

The stakes, for both parties, could not be higher.