Zuma says IFP not so different
2010-08-28 22:22
Cape Town - There was no longer any need for differences of opinion between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday.
He was speaking at the funeral ceremony of former deputy safety and security minister Joe Matthews, held in Cape Town's St George's Cathedral.
Zuma said the amicable relations between the ANC and IFP could be attributed to leaders such as Matthews, who understood both organisations and were able to promote peace and understanding.
The issues on which the ANC had historically differed from Inkatha - the armed struggle and sanctions - no longer existed.
There was therefore "no need for differing today".
"Comrade Matthews practised unity... in his memory let us promote unity amongst all South Africans," Zuma said.
Zuma said Matthews, a former president of the ANC Youth league, got in touch with his comrades in the ANC when he returned to South Africa from exile after the unbanning of the organisation.
Keen to attend
"I remember that he was very keen to attend the 1991 conference of the ANC in Durban but ended up not attending due to circumstances that were beyond his control," Zuma said.
He said that during the Codesa negotiations that led to South Africa's first democratic elections, Matthews was asked by the Inkatha Freedom Party to become one of its legal advisers.
"He consulted senior ANC leaders on this matter and the organisation did not have a difficulty with him becoming an IFP legal adviser," Zuma said.
"He did this very discreetly, and in manner that would perhaps be known in the history books.
"So it must be clear (that) going to that political home was a known thing, and the ANC understood it, and it agreed for very important reasons."
Matthews was sent to Parliament in 1994 on an IFP ticket, and appointed to the deputy minister's post as part of the IFP's inclusion in a government of national unity.
Earlier in the funeral ceremony, IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi said he had been "shocked" to see former ANC Cabinet minister Pallo Jordan quoted in last week's Sunday Times as saying Matthews's role in the liberation struggle would have been more highly rated had he not joined the IFP.
Cheap shot
This was a "distasteful cheap shot", he said, adding that there was "nothing strange in Joe Matthews joing the IFP".
Both he, Buthelezi, and Matthews, had their roots in the ANC.
Buthelezi also hit out at Jordan's suggestion that Matthews' call in the 1970s for the ANC to recognise the Bantustans had also diminished his reputation.
"Please let us not distort history," Buthelezi said.
He said it was his own rejection of independence for KwaZulu-Natal that put paid to the grand apartheid scheme of separate territories for black and white.
Buthelezi served as chief minister of KwaZulu-Natal.
In the same Sunday Times article, Matthews was quoted as relating that he joined the IFP after being snubbed by the ANC by not being nominated as a delegate to the 1991 conference.
Saturday's cathedral ceremony, billed as a "provincial official funeral", was attended by several hundred people, including numerous current and former Cabinet ministers, and the Speaker of the National Assembly, Max Sisulu.
- SAPA