The IFP will hold its long-awaited national conference to elect new leadership no later than August 2025.
IFP president Velenkosini Hlabisa is expected to go head-to-head with KwaZulu-Natal premier Thami Ntuli for the top seat.
Hlabisa said on Monday the party was auditing its branches, an exercise it expects to take the remainder of this year.
“The IFP secretary-general (Siphosethu Ngcobo) has set up several audit teams consisting of members of the national council — the party’s highest decision-making body in-between conferences.
“The audit teams will be responsible for auditing almost 800 IFP branches and will audit the additional 1,400 branches once they are inaugurated,” said Hlabisa.
The audit process will be undertaken ahead of the elective conference, he said.
“It goes without saying that this audit is necessary and is a crucial process that needs to be undertaken to ensure that credible and robust branches attend the conference.”
Hlabisa suggested that preparations for the conference had to take a back seat as party leaders were part of establishing new governments and settling in their government positions.
Hlabisa, who is also minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, is one of four IFP leaders in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national executive. Ntuli is the premier of KwaZulu-Natal and leads a four-party coalition government in the province.
“The IFP went to elections very aware that after elections there would be a period of establishing government at provincial level, at national level and the first 100 days is a critical period after elections.
“That is why our focus and attention was in ensuring that the government of KwaZulu-Natal becomes functional. There is nobody in KwaZulu-Natal who doesn’t know that the IFP leads the province because the government is visible.
“There is nobody in South Africa who doesn’t know who is the minister of Cogta, who is minister of public service administration, who are deputy ministers of transport and environment, forestry and fisheries, because these leaders are active.”
The party’s national executive committee decided at the end of September that it has stabilised its deployments in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and at national level, and therefore it could activate party activities to prepare for a conference.
Once branch auditing is finalised, the party’s national council will decide on the timelines.
First, there will be election of constituencies, followed by elections of district committees, provincial executive committees and the women and youth brigades at national level and the national executive committee.
“We are giving the auditing period until December, obviously January is a difficult time for everybody. In February, a process at a constituency level should begin.”
In March, the party will celebrate its 50th anniversary then the election process at district level will continue followed by the provincial level.
“We are looking somewhere between June and August, but 12 months before the next local government elections, we will be done with all our structures’ elections and fully focusing on a mission of making local government work,” he said.
“The latest will be August next year,” he said about the latest possible date for party elections.
Hlabisa said the party already has a road map to the 2026 local government elections.
“We would want to finalise internal elections next year so that in a period of 12 months running up to the next local government elections, we have no internal elections but [will be] concentrating on a robust election campaign to the local government elections.”
