Inkhata Freedom Party
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Inkatha Freedom Party
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|---|---|
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| President | Mangosuthu Buthelezi |
| Founder | Mangosuthu Buthelezi |
| Founded | 21 March 1975 |
| Headquarters | 2 Durban Club Place, Durban |
| Student wing | South African Democratic Students Movement |
| Ideology |
Federalism Conservatism Zulu minority's interests |
| Political position | Right-wing |
| Colours | Red |
| National Assembly seats |
10 / 400
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| NCOP seats |
2 / 90
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| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
| www |
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The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is a political party in South Africa. Since its founding, it has been led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi. It is currently the fourth largest party in the National Assembly of South Africa, having lost almost half its seats and votes in the 2014 general election and yielding third place to the newly formed Economic Freedom Fighters.
Policy proposals of the IFP include:
Gatsha Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a former member of the ANC Youth League, founded the Inkatha National Cultural Liberation Movement (INCLM), which later became the IFP, on 21 March 1975. Buthelezi used a structure rooted in Inkatha (meaning "crown" in Zulu), a 1920s cultural organisation for Zulus established by Zulu King Solomon kaDinuzulu. The party was established in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, after which branches of the party quickly sprang up in the Transvaal, the Orange Free State and the Western Cape.
Because of Buthelezi's former position in the African National Congress, the two organisations were initially very close and each supported the other in the anti-apartheid struggle. However, by the early 1980s the IFP had come to be regarded as a thorn in the side of the ANC, which wielded much more political force through the United Democratic Front (UDF), than the IFP and the Pan Africanist Congress. Although the IFP leadership favoured non-violence, as opposed to the ANC, which had created the Umkhonto we Sizwe, there is clear evidence that during the time that negotiations were taking place in the early 1990s, Inkatha and ANC members were at war with each other, and Self-Protection Units (SPUs) and Self-Defence Units (SDUs) were formed, respectively, as their protection forces.
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Wikipedia