ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula says he has no intention of acknowledging or responding to MK Party deputy president Tony Yengeni’s advances to form a new government in KwaZulu-Natal.
Yengeni told the Sunday Times that he felt offended by Mbalula for ignoring his invitation last month to attend a meeting with the MK Party, the EFF and the National Freedom Party to discuss forming a new coalition in the province.
Mbalula said on Wednesday that even if Yengeni invited him to 15 meetings, he would still not receive a response.
According to Mbalula, this is because he did not recognise Yengeni and the MK Party as a legitimate political formation.
“They stole our name and I’m still in court with them. I’ll recognise them the day I lose in court. For now, they’ve caused confusion, they’ve stolen our name, I don’t recognise them,” said Mbalula.
Yengeni wrote to Mbalula on February 22 telling him that the MK Party had been having engagements with the EFF and the NFP about constituting a new “stable, inclusive and effective” provincial government in KZN.
He said he was inviting the ANC “in the spirit of cooperation” to be part of the discussions as they believed the party’s participation “will add meaningful value to the process”.
But Mbalula took a hardline stance on Wednesday, dismissing Yengeni’s overtures and essentially saying the ANC and the MK Party were not friends.
“Now he’s called us to a meeting, to do what in a meeting with Tony? To discuss with him until the sun sets, discuss what with him when they have disorganised the revolution, attacked it and made us become beggars,” he said.
“Now we must run after them like they are revolutionaries? They are not revolutionaries, they must know that. They work with Morocco, they work with Israel, they work with everything that is wrong. They endorsed Donald Trump, so what do they want with us? What kind of friends are they? When it’s time to eat they want us because that’s what they are interested in. What should we recognise there? There is nothing to recognise, he can write to himself.”
Former president Jacob Zuma’s party became the biggest party in KwaZulu-Natal when it won 46% of the vote in the province in the 2024 elections, reducing the ANC’s share to just 17% from 55% in 2019. But the ANC partnered with the IFP (16%), the DA (13%) and the NFP (0.56%) to form a coalition government to keep the MK Party out of power.
The coalition elected the IFP’s Thami Ntuli as premier, with the MEC positions being shared.
However, a fracture emerged in the government of provincial unity when the MK Party courted kingmaker parties, the NFP and the EFF, in a bid to elbow its way into office. The EFF, which won 2% in the province in 2024, never joined the coalition.
After the NFP quit the coalition in January, Yengeni sent Mbalula a letter proposing a meeting — which would have been held last weekend.
Yengeni said on Tuesday he was “extremely” offended that the letter, dated February 22, was not acknowledged.
“The ANC did not bother even to acknowledge the receipt of our letter, let alone confirming attendance or not,” he said. “The MK Party, EFF and NFP decided to invite the ANC for discussions about possibilities of forming coalition governments in both KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Why they didn’t attend those meetings, it’s for you to ask them.”
Yengeni urged the Sunday Times to ask the ANC why it had failed to respond. “We feel strongly that for them to not even confirm receipt of our invitation letter is a bad attitude and extremely offensive,” he said.
Mbalula said immediately after the elections they were awaiting a call from Zuma asking them to a meeting to discuss the constitution of a new government in KZN, a call which never came.
“We said to them they must constitute a government in KZN, they went up and down, they called the EFF, they called the NFP, they didn’t call us. We said publicly we are awaiting for them to invite us, they didn’t invite us to constitute the government.
“The IFP called us and we went there and said to them, what are you giving us? and they said we can have that discussion, and we said in that case there is no problem,” said Mbalula.
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