Buthelezi approaches Zuma

2008-08-23 19:30

Ulundi - Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Saturday that he had asked ANC president Jacob Zuma to intervene in the deteriorating relationship between the two parties in KwaZulu-Natal.

Addressing thousands of IFP supporters in Ulundi on Saturday, Buthelezi read out the letter he had written to Zuma.

In the letter, Buthelezi said that he was concerned about the lack of reconciliation between the two parties.

He accused the African National Congress of not co-operating in the attempts to heal the rift between the two parties.

Relations between the ANC and the IFP worsened when two IFP MEC's Nyanga Ngubane and Blessed Gwala, were fired by the ANC led provincial legislature in 2005.

ANC failed to attend lecture

Buthelezi said ANC leaders failed to attend an April 2008 lecture on improving relations between the ANC and the IFP which was held by Professor Herbert Vilakazi

He said their failure to attend was made "conspicuous" by their absence especially after they had agreed to attend the lecture.

He also discussed the issue of changing the province's capital from Pietermaritzburg to Ulundi as "something that sticks out like a sore womb".

The ANC moved the provincial capital from Ulundi to Pietermaritzburg following the 2004 election, when it won control of the province.

"The ANC in the legislature colluded with the DA and voted for Pietermaitzburg as the sole capital," he said.

"What I find hurtful and difficult to accept is the rationale that Premier Sbu Ndebele likes to use that Ulundi was to be discarded as it was previously the capital of a bantustan."

- SAPA