President Thabo Mbeki launched a scathing attack on the Democratic Alliance and Inkatha Freedom Party yesterday, saying voters will decide the fate of this "rightwing coalition".

Writing in the African National Congress' online publication, ANC Today, he accused the IFP of siding with various rightwing groupings to protect "white interests" since 1992.

These included the Conservative Party led by Ferdie Hartzenberg, the Bophuthatswana and Ciskei Bantustans of Lucas Mangope and Oupa Gqozo, and other rightwing Afrikaner groups, in an alliance that called itself the Concerned South Africans Group (Cosag).

The IFP later featured in another alliance of a similar kind, the Freedom Alliance, formed in October 1993, he said.

Now, on the eve of the third general election and the celebration of the second decade of liberation, the IFP had entered into a new alliance - with the DA.

Mbeki said the DA's predecessor, the Democratic Party, displaced the New National Party as the official opposition in 1999 "by appeasing and absorbing much of the white right wing, which felt that the NNP had betrayed it by working to transform itself into a party working for the construction of a non-racial democracy".

The DP had transformed itself into the DA, having attracted the former supporters of the NP, who had come to reject the NNP as a traitor to white interests.

"This is the new ally of the IFP. Together they have formed a new Cosag or Freedom Alliance, which they call the 'Coalition for Change'," he said.

Whether the DA and its allies would get the electoral support "it claims they will", was a matter that would be resolved by the electorate.

However, the fact of the matter was the Coalition for Change was a "rightwing coalition, which is opposed to many of the initiatives we have taken since 1994, especially to address the interests of the poor at home and abroad".

"We have an intelligent electorate. I have no doubt that it has the capacity to see the reality behind the disguise of seemingly seductive words".

The ANC would continue to work with the NNP and others, respecting their independence and appreciating their commitment to the construction of a new South Africa that truly belonged to all who lived in it, Mbeki said. – Sapa.