Inkatha Freedom Party Councillor Siboniso Mbatha was arrested last Sunday, along with two other men, for being in possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition. 
He spent four nights in custody before paying the R2 000 bail. His two accomplices were granted R1 000 bail each. Sources claimed that the arrest could be part of ongoing internal strife within the local IFP.

Following his release on bail last Thursday, Councillor Mbatha told the Courier he was travelling back from an engagement party at Stratford Farm in his double-cab bakkie on the night of July 13. Two other men, to whom he had agreed to give a lift back to Dundee after the party, accompanied him.
“They told me that earlier in the day they had found a firearm lying between some rocks. 
“I was about to drop them off when we were pulled over by a police patrol van. 

“They searched the van and apparently saw one of the men trying to hide the firearm in the car. We were then all taken to the police station, where we were charged and held in custody.”
He said the incident left him in shock: “I did not know what was going to happen to me, or if this was planned.” 
IFP spokesman for the area, Dr Funokwakhe Xulu, said the IFP could not comment on the incident: 

“A private matter’

“It is a private matter, and nothing to do with the IFP as Councillor Mbatha was out on his own as an individual at the time, not representing the party.”
However, he said the IFP was against any ‘trigger-happy tendencies’, irrespective of anyone’s place in society.
IFP Constituency Chairperson, NE Khanyile, emphasised that ‘we as the party have nothing to do with what happened to Siboniso Mbatha’.

He dismissed rumours that there is internal fighting within the IFP.
He said, as far as he knows, everybody within the party is ‘working well with each other’.