IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's planned retirement has been put on ice - again.
This time IFP leaders say the party is not ready to elect a successor because they have discovered a significant number of bogus branches.
Buthelezi, who turns 90 in August, has offered to step down several times before, only for him to remain at the helm of the party he founded in 1975.
Those who have challenged his leadership before, including former IFP national chairs Ziba Jiyane and Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi, were forced out of the party.
The IFP announced in October that Buthelezi would quit for real this time, but there is no indication of an election.
Party leaders said this week that they had had to postpone the election because many branches had irregularities.
The IFP conference where Buthelezi was expected to step down was to be held in March, but sources in the party this week indicated there was no new date.
Party treasurer-general Narend Singh said: "You cannot go into an election when the credibility of branches is in question."Singh said the party's national executive committee decided to extend the branch auditing by six weeks.
He said despite records being sent to the national office that showed the branches were inaugurated, actual memberships were nonexistent.
"When site visits were made to a number of districts, we found that there were branches that were inaugurated on paper but did not exist.
"So the NEC undertook an audit process, doing random sampling, and now we have got teams deployed to go out and reconfirm whether all those branches that have supposedly sent in documents to our head office ... that they are duly inaugurated and whether there is membership," he said.
Asked how big the problem of ghost branches was, Singh said: "Let's just say big enough to influence whether you hold a conference or not."
The KwaZulu-Natal IFP secretary, Velenkosini Hlabisa, has been tipped to take over from Buthelezi.
He was proposed by Buthelezi at the national council meeting in October and was supported by the NEC.
Singh said while Hlabisa's candidacy still stood, other party members were free to stand for any of the top leadership positions.
The nominations process will open once the party announces the date of the election...