The Inkatha Freedom Party: Between the Impossible and the Ineffective.

Abstract

From the perspective of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the 2004 election was remarkable in two ways. First, the IFP fared worse than ever. Formed by Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi in 1975, the party is rooted in rural Zulu people of the KwaZulu-Natal province. During the apartheid era, the IFP virtually was the KwaZulu government. After 1994, it was the leading party in the province, and a governing partner of the African National Congress (ANC) at the national level. The 2004 election saw the IFP lose its thirty years of dominance in KwaZulu-Natal to the ANC, and with it, the party’s stake in national government.