IFP takes five-point plan to KwaMashu as Hlabisa asks voters to trust the party on November 4

The Inkatha Freedom Party has put a five-point Commitment Plan in front of voters ahead of the November 4 local government elections, with party leader Velenkosini Hlabisa asking South Africans to trust the IFP with their vote.

As SABC News reported on 21 September, Hlabisa unveiled the plan to supporters gathered at the Princess Magogo Stadium in KwaMashu, Durban, on Sunday. He was interviewed on Morning Live the following morning.

The Commitment Plan is the party’s platform for the municipal polls, when voters across the country elect councils and, in the metros and larger towns, directly elect mayors. The IFP is contesting those elections with a document it calls a commitment rather than a manifesto, and the setting for the launch was not incidental. KwaMashu sits in the eThekwini metro, the single largest council in KwaZulu-Natal and the province where the party’s support is concentrated.

That is the context a South African reader brings to the launch and that a viewer outside the country would not. The IFP governs a number of municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, holds seats in the provincial legislature and sits in the national coalition government. Its record in local government, and the record of the councils it wants to take from rivals, is what the five points will be measured against between now and polling day.

What the plan commits the party to has not been set out in the material available to this paper. The five points themselves, their costing and the timelines attached to them are the substance a voter needs in order to judge the offer, and they are the part of the launch that a stadium address does not settle.

What the launch does establish is the shape of the IFP’s appeal. Hlabisa’s message, as reported, is a direct request for trust at the ballot box, delivered in the metro that carries the most weight in the province and in front of a crowd the party will read as a sign of its ground strength.

The local government elections take place on November 4. Between now and then, parties across the spectrum will put their platforms to voters in the same way, and the IFP’s five points will be tested against what residents of KwaMashu and the rest of eThekwini say they need from the council that runs their water, their refuse collection, their electricity and their streets.

Source: SABC News, 2026 LGE | IFP outlines its five-point Commitment Plan