IFP takes its corruption fight to Ulundi as Hlabisa closes campaign
Party leader Velenkosini Hlabisa told the closing rally that municipalities need competent councillors and merit-based appointments, with public money serving communities rather than political interests.
The Inkatha Freedom Party closed its local government election campaign in Ulundi on Sunday, with party leader Velenkosini Hlabisa telling the rally that fighting corruption in municipalities would be a priority, alongside ethical leadership, financial management and accountability.
As SABC News reported on 1 November, Hlabisa used the northern KwaZulu-Natal event to argue that municipalities need competent councillors and professional administrators, with key positions filled through merit-based appointments.
He said public funds must serve communities rather than political interests.
For voters in this province, that is not an abstract argument. Municipal failure is felt in the household: a water pipe that stays broken, a road that is not regraded, a refuse truck that does not come, a clinic without power, an indigent grant that does not arrive. The IFP’s pitch is that the people who run those systems should be chosen for what they can do rather than for what they are owed.
The party is contesting the elections in a province where it has long been a governing force in parts of the north, and where its record in municipal office is part of what voters will weigh. Hlabisa’s emphasis on financial management and accountability speaks directly to that record, and to the audit findings and service failures that residents in KwaZulu-Natal municipalities have lived with.
It also sets the terms of a contest. Every party in these elections is now promising cleaner government. The question voters will put to all of them is the same one, and it is not answered by a pledge made at a closing rally: who will be appointed, on what basis, and what happens to a council that spends public money on something other than the public.
The IFP’s answer, in Hlabisa’s words at Ulundi, is merit-based appointment to key posts and a council that treats the municipal budget as community money. The election will decide who gets to test that.
SABC News reported the rally and Hlabisa’s remarks.
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