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Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Upon my return from the World Economic Forum on Africa last week, the IFP's
National Council met and took a difficult decision.

Faced with the fact that several of our districts and constituencies have
not yet held elective conferences, it became clear to us that holding our
Annual General Conference in three weeks time, as scheduled, would go
against our Constitution.

The Constitution requires these necessary steps to be completed in advance
and we, as National Council, have no authority to circumvent the
Constitution, no matter how long we have waited for Conference to be held.
It fell to us to postpone the Conference yet again until the 23rd to 25th of
July.

We knew that the media would pounce on this decision and read all manner of
hidden agendas into our doing what the Constitution requires us to do. And
that happened just as we predicted. It is frustrating that political
analysts voice their opinions so freely without understanding the rationale
behind our decisions. Because they carry the title of political analysts,
people accept their opinions as fact. In many ways, instead of debating
problems, they are creating them.

The decision to postpone our Conference was taken collectively and was
agreed to by all members of the National Council who were present, including
our National Chairperson.

I single out our National Chairperson because much noise has been made, at
the instigation of some rabble rousers, about the leadership of our Party
supposedly persecuting our National Chairperson due to some perceived
ambition on her part to take the presidency at our next elective Conference.
The fact that she has publically rejected the notion of standing for
nomination is conveniently ignored.

During our National Council meeting, the National Chairperson's vote was one
of the unanimous votes to expel certain leaders from our Party based on
their inflammatory utterances expressed outside of Party structures. One
would think that if the National Chairperson appreciated their offensive
behaviour, ostensibly taken on her behalf, she would have thanked rather
than expelled them.

Among the districts which must now hold elective conferences before July are
Zululand, the City of Johannesburg, Ethekwini and Umgungundlovu. The
ructions accompanying the purported succession debate have disrupted their
conferences and given credence to the accepted wisdom that, in Africa,
transition is generally accompanied by instability.

This concept was in fact one that we grappled with at the World Economic
Forum on Africa just last week. Ms Graça Machel and Ms Tumi Makgoba led us
in a multi-generational interactive discussion titled "Leadership in Africa
Across the Ages", during which I noted the unique challenge of building
within the dynamics of African society both elements of change and
stability.

I have borne the responsibility of leadership since the mid-fifties, which
is more than half a century. Few people have such a record in modern times,
but I would guess that most of them can be found in Africa. Our tradition is
that of enduring and stable leadership.

But we must now confront and test this tradition within the demands of a
rapidly evolving society. Within the recorded history of mankind, society
has never evolved and changed as fast as it has in the past few decades. The
present and future rate of change in Africa is bound to be faster than
anywhere else in the world, because there are so many opportunities for us
to catch up and come on par.

Within this context, we need to ponder whether the rapid transformation of
leadership within African society is one of the elements necessary to
promote or accommodate change, or whether the continuity of leadership is
one of those necessary elements which enable change to take place in a
reassuring environment of continuity and stability.

Successful change needs stability. However, for this to work, African
leadership must educate itself and be committed to a culture of change,
almost to the extreme. This might be difficult, but it is the price to be
paid if we want to pursue the possibility of seeing change accompanied by
stability.

During the National Assembly debate on the budget vote of the Presidency
yesterday, I quoted our President's words at the opening of the King Shaka
International Airport in Durban: "We must change the way the Government
works, and we must change the way the country works." The need for change,
transformation and growth in South Africa has been on our agenda for
decades.

When we discussed the future of Africa's democracies at the World Economic
Forum, I noted that rivers of ink have been spent on this issue without a
concrete plan emerging for how we might entrench democracy further. Among
the needs we must consider in South Africa is that of splitting the offices
of Head of State and Head of Government, as is prevalent throughout Europe.

Nowhere in sub-Saharan Africa is there a parliamentary system which splits
the offices of Head of State and Head of Government, leaving to the
President the role of ensuring the survival of democracy, guaranteeing the
constitutional order and protecting the rule of law, while the Prime
Minister runs the day to day business of government.

Even in those countries in which there is a Prime Minister alongside the
President, the executive authority vests in the President, and the Prime
Minister is effectively a Vice President. This has removed an important
check and balance on the exercise of executive functions.

The World Economic Forum gave me opportunity to call on this continent's
leaders to accept that the future of African democracy depends on Africans.
We have passed the season of grievances, complaints and justifications.
Henceforth any injury to our democracies is going to be self-inflicted.

I cannot stress enough the importance of accountability of our leaders both
domestically and on a continental basis. I am saddened by how the Peer
Review Mechanisms we established following from NEPAD and within the African
Union have not yet proven their efficacy. Urgent consideration should be
given to finding more effective forms of dealing with this problem.

In this continent we always felt that liberation was a collegial
responsibility. We have now embraced the notion of making continental
development a collegial responsibility. It is time for us to stand firm and
prove that we consider the future of democracy on this continent likewise a
collegial responsibility, on the basis of which we accept to be judged by
our posterity.

In the short-term, we will be judged by popular opinion, the media and our
contemporaries. Over 35 years, the IFP has accepted this inevitability. But
rather than employing all our energy to become the flavour of the day, we
have focused our vision on the long-term legacy we are giving South Africa.

And a commitment to upholding our Constitution, regardless of how our
detractors might use this against us, is one of the immoveable principles
that constitute our legacy.

Yours in the service of the nation,