By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Pietermaritzburg High Court has granted an interim order blocking the National Freedom Party (NFP) from removing Mbali Shinga from the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) legislature.
Shinga was expelled for refusing to back the Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party-sponsored motion of no-confidence against Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli.
She argued in her court papers that, under the NFP constitution, the final structure empowered to decide on expulsions is the party’s General National Congress, not the appeals tribunal.
Judge Thina Siwendu ordered that Shinga remains both an NFP member and an MPL pending the outcome of a full judicial review of her party expulsion.
The court order also interdict KZN Legislature Speaker Nontembeko Boyce from proceeding with plans to swear in NFP President Ivan Barnes.
Shinga said her troubles with the party began last year when the NFP instructed her to amend the provincial substitute list and place Barnes first on the reserve list.
She said this happened even though Barnes had been placed first on the party’s list of candidates for the National Assembly. The NFP, however, did not secure enough votes in the 2024 elections to win a seat in Parliament.
Shinga said tensions escalated after the MK Party tabled a motion of no confidence in KZN Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli (IFP) in November last year. Ntuli leads the provincial Government of Provincial Unity, made up of the IFP, ANC, DA and NFP.
NFP won 19,548 votes of the 3.5 million cast in KZN, making the infamously fractious party KZN’s kingmaker.
The MK party swept the floor in the 2024 elections in KZN, securing 37 of the 80 seats, but the opposition united to keep it out of power.
The legislature has 80 members. If MK, EFF, and NFP were to form a pact, it would be divided 40–40, leaving the provincial government unable to pass any legislation. MK party has 37 seats, the EFF has two, and the NFP has one. The IFP holds 15 seats, the ANC 14 and the DA 11.
The party has a patchy history. In the 2016 local government elections, it botched its registration and completed the paperwork in only one municipality nationwide, securing it a paltry 5,000 votes.
In 2019, Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi had a stroke. She died in 2021, the year Shinga was elected to the party’s national executive committee.
In the 2021 local government elections, the NFP had a spectacular bounce-back, securing 157,000 votes in KZN municipalities.
At the time, the NFP had only one seat in the KZN legislature. Its sole MPL resigned to start his own political party, and Shinga was appointed to replace him in October 2022.
Shinga applied herself and raised her profile so that a year later, at the NFP’s KZN conference, she was elected chair. A few months later, in December 2023, the party held its national conference, bedevilled by infighting and court challenges.