NFP president’s Zululand seat may have been illegal from the start

By Celani Sikhakhane

• IEC rules say councillors must be registered voters in the municipality they serve. NFP president Ivan Barnes is registered in Gillitts, west of Durban, not Zululand.

• NFP chief whip in Zululand District Municipality Siphamandla Ntombela says Barnes should not have the seat. A 2024 court ruling that put him there never tested the voter-registration requirement.

South African electoral law bars anyone from serving as a councillor in a municipality where they are not a registered voter.

NFP president Ivan Barnes has held a seat on the Zululand District Municipality council since 2024. His registered voting station is at Winston Park Primary School in Gillitts, west of Durban.

That means his seat may have been invalid from the day he took it. And until this week, nobody had formally raised it.

The party’s own chief whip in Zululand District Municipality, Siphamandla Ntombela, told Scrolla this week that Barnes should not be there.

Ntombela provided Barnes’s voting details showing his registration is in Gillitts, inside the eThekwini municipality, not anywhere in the Zululand district.

“We want to know why Barnes was deployed in Zululand to be a councillor whereas his voting station is in Durban,” Ntombela said.

Barnes was deployed to Zululand in 2024 after the NFP moved to replace its councillor Sbu Nkosi, who refused to give up the seat.

A Pietermaritzburg High Court ruled in Barnes’s favour and Nkosi was removed. But that ruling dealt only with the internal party dispute over who held the seat. The voter-registration requirement was never put before the judge.

Barnes told Scrolla he knows nothing about any complaint.

“We have never received any complaints about this matter,” he said.

The NFP’s secretary general, Sunset Xaba, did not respond to questions. He told Scrolla he was too busy.

The Zululand challenge lands as the NFP fights a separate war inside its own structures. The party expelled its KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Mbali Shinga earlier this year. A court ordered her reinstatement. The NFP suspended her again days later. Barnes is at the centre of both fights.

Pictured above: NFP president Ivan Barnes is facing questions about the legal validity of his Zululand District Municipality council seat, with electoral law requiring councillors to be registered voters in the municipality they serve.

Image source: NFP