Former KwaZulu-Natal premier Willies Mchunu says the ANC snubbed almost half the voters in the province by choosing not to work with the MKP to run the provincial government.
Mchunu, who resigned from the ANC this week, said he couldn’t live with the party’s decision and that was why he had decided to call it quits.
The ANC veteran is a long-time ally of MKP leader Jacob Zuma and speculation is rife that he will join Zuma’s party in the coming days.
In an interview with the Sunday Times yesterday, Mchunu would not reveal his new political home, saying only he wouldn’t be a “political orphan” for long.
The MKP received 45% of the votes in the elections. However, it sits on the opposition benches as the ANC and other parties decided to form a government of provincial unity.
“I would have lived with that decision at the national level, but in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where I live, 45% of the people — almost half the voters — voted for one party [MKP]. The rest were voted for by fewer individuals. It is my political conviction ... that in a democracy where a party voted [for] by the majority is being snubbed, that actually [amounts to] snubbing the people who voted for that party,” he said.
Mchunu led coalition talks in KwaZulu-Natal between the ANC and the National Freedom Party after the 2011 elections. He said the established principle had always been that the majority party should lead the government and accommodate partners.
He said the ANC had options, but it had made its choices. If he had stayed in the ANC, this would have turned him into a critic of the party and a nuisance who added no value to it.
He said no amount of tension between the ANC and its splinter, Zuma’s MKP, justified the ANC working with a party such as the DA.
“If it was people who had been at loggerheads for years, such as the ANC and the IFP, I would have understood it, but these people were in the same party barely a year ago. They know where they differ, and it is not on everything. Those people [can identify the issues] we can unite around and enter into ongoing sincere negotiations to find each other.
“My other discomfort is that within the ANC the issues around coalitions did not start after the elections — they started long ago with your journalist colleague Snuki Zikalala. He was the first one who, long before the elections, said the ANC had to work with the DA. It’s not easy for some of us to say, ‘Let’s work with the DA’, and then hate the people we struggled with.”
Mchunu said his position was purely a political one that had not been influenced by external factors.
“You don’t make a decision as a politician without having a plan for the future. I do have in mind what I would prefer to do, but I have not yet communicated with [the] relevant people about my political future.
“It would be unfair for them to learn about it in the papers. I also think other people will have to accept me and my views first, so now I must talk to them about joining them, about why I am joining them,” Mchunu said.
Mchunu resigned his ANC membership this week after writing a letter four months ago in which he expressed his opposition to the inclusion of the DA in the GNU and the exclusion of the MKP from the KwaZulu-Natal government.
“I made a decision based on a matter not thoroughly canvassed with the organisation. Yes, I had not had the opportunity to engage the national leadership, but that is not the protocol. I spoke at my level, which is the provincial one, and I have been patient,” he said.
It is my political conviction ... that in a democracy where a party voted [for] by the majority is snubbed, that actually [amounts to] snubbing the people who voted for that party
— Willies Mchunu, former KwaZulu-Natal premier
He said the ANC had options, but it had made its choices. If he had stayed in the ANC, this would have turned him into a critic of the party and a nuisance who added no value to it.
He said no amount of tension between the ANC and its splinter, Zuma’s MKP, justified the ANC working with a party such as the DA.
“If it was people who had been at loggerheads for years, such as the ANC and the IFP, I would have understood it, but these people were in the same party barely a year ago. They know where they differ, and it is not on everything. Those people [can identify the issues] we can unite around and enter into ongoing sincere negotiations to find each other.
“My other discomfort is that within the ANC the issues around coalitions did not start after the elections — they started long ago with your journalist colleague Snuki Zikalala. He was the first one who, long before the elections, said the ANC had to work with the DA. It’s not easy for some of us to say, ‘Let’s work with the DA’, and then hate the people we struggled with.”
Mchunu said his position was purely a political one that had not been influenced by external factors.
“You don’t make a decision as a politician without having a plan for the future. I do have in mind what I would prefer to do, but I have not yet communicated with [the] relevant people about my political future.
“It would be unfair for them to learn about it in the papers. I also think other people will have to accept me and my views first, so now I must talk to them about joining them, about why I am joining them,” Mchunu said.
Mchunu resigned his ANC membership this week after writing a letter four months ago in which he expressed his opposition to the inclusion of the DA in the GNU and the exclusion of the MKP from the KwaZulu-Natal government.
“I made a decision based on a matter not thoroughly canvassed with the organisation. Yes, I had not had the opportunity to engage the national leadership, but that is not the protocol. I spoke at my level, which is the provincial one, and I have been patient,” he said.
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