XPost: alt.obituaries, soc.culture.south-africa

On Sat, 9 Sep 2023 08:16:40 -0700 (PDT), That Derek
<thatderek@yahoo.com> wrote:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/mangosuthu-buthelezi-traditional-zulu-chief-who-played-an-ambiguous-role-during-apartheid-obituary/ar-AA1gt74X

The Telegraph

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, traditional Zulu chief who played an ambiguous
role during apartheid – obituary

Story by Telegraph Obituaries •
5h

Chief Mangosutu Buthelezi, who has died aged 95, was one of the most influential and certainly the most controversial of the black leaders
who loomed large on South Africa’s political landscape during the
turbulent years that led to the remarkable peaceful transition to
democracy in 1994.

Kate Spade New York Boxxy Padded Leather Crossbody Bag, Black,
Women's, Handbags & Purses Crossbody Bags & Camera Bags
Kate Spade New York Boxxy Padded Leather Crossbody Bag, Black,
Women's, Handbags & Purses Crossbody Bags & Camera Bags

Always an enigmatic, hypersensitive figure, he attempted to reconcile,
with varying degrees of success, the dual personalities of a
traditional Zulu chieftain with that of a forward-looking, enlightened
modern African statesman who, for many years, saw himself as the
natural choice as South Africa’s first black president.

One day would find him in a Soweto stadium, clad in leopard skins and loincloth, exhorting with assegai in hand, throngs of chanting Zulus
to respect and observe the ferocious warrior traditions of their
forebears and the legacies of their proud and bloodthirsty monarchs
like King Shaka from whom he was descended.

The next evening, perhaps, he would be guest of honour at the smartest
of Belgravia dinner parties, charming and witty in black tie as he
held forth eloquently, if at length, on the problems confronting the
world in general and Africa in particular.

In both roles, he was an arch conservative, deeply suspicious of
communism in any form, a firm believer in the free market and
capitalist values and, no doubt because of his royal ancestry, deeply
committed to hierarchical, traditional values.

Such views did not endear him to the African National Congress (ANC)
then banned in apartheid South Africa with its leaders either in jail
or in exile. The ANC, and its internal surrogate, the United
Democratic Front (UDF), were closely aligned with the South African
Communist Party. Both regarded themselves as revolutionary liberation
movements in the style of the times. Many aspirant leaders were
educated and trained military in the old Soviet Union or its
satellites.

Successive South African white regimes, clumsily deploying visions of
the “red menace” to cloak the Afrikaner’s increasingly desperate and beleagured racial policies, saw in Buthelezi a credible ally with a
large and powerful power base among the Zulus, the country’s largest
tribal group.

For years they miscalculated Buthelezi’s intelligence, ambition and
shrewd grasp of history, in particular the close involvement of his
ancestors in nearly two centuries of anti-colonial and anti-settler
resistance. The impis of his maternal great grandfather, King
Cetshwayo, had outmanoeuvred and crushed the bulk of Lord Chelmsford’s imperial expeditionary army at Isandhlwana in 1879.

Earlier in the 19th century, Zulu warriors had slaughtered the Boer
trekker, Piet Retief, and his men as they ventured into the green,
rolling hills of Zululand. Both defeats were bloodily avenged but
healthy respect for the Zulu people lingered long in memory and
legend.

Buthelezi consolidated his grip on Zululand through his Inkatha
movement, later to become the Inkatha Freedom Party. Originally an
unabashedly tribal grouping, Inkatha dominated every aspect of
government, administration and life in the Zulu heartland. Buthelezi
was able to exercise to the full his autocratic and arrogant
tendencies through an elaborate system of patronage.

And yet he steadfastly resisted the many attempts and lavish
blandishments by successive National Party governments to persuade him
to accept the spurious “full independence” as Transkei, Ciskei and
other tribal homelands had done. He was not, he declared loudly and
frequently, going to become a puppet of a white regime’s vision of
“grand apartheid”.

His notoriously long winded speeches (one was timed at just over four
hours) contained visionary pearls for those diligent enough to stay
the course. In the early 1980s he warned that black South Africans
faced the stark choice between armed struggle and the politics of
negotiation.

“This choice cannot be shelved,” he said. “South Africans will either
be liberated by the forces of violence which will go on to form a
one-party state and which will be faced with the awesome task of
reconstructing this country on a foundation of ashes...or will it be
liberated by democratic forces which achieve the liberation of this
country through the politics of negotiation which will give rise to a government of national unity.”

The ANC, committed as it then was to the revolution and to rendering
South Africa “ungovernable”, remained deeply suspicious of Buthelezi, resenting his influence in Natal and among the tens of thousands of
migrant Zulu workers living in the barrack-like hostels in townships
around industrial Johannesburg and the gold mines of the
Witwatersrand.

ANC activists moved in force into Natal, organising underground cells
and recruiting on large scale. They found rich pickings among the
militant Zulu youth in the urban townships and the universities where
non-white students were contemptuous of tribal rituals and the
deep-rooted conservatism of the rural elders who formed the backbone
of Inkatha.

They were able to exploit the age-old rivalries between Zulu clans.
The politicisation of the feuds polarised Zulu opinion in Natal and
led inexorably to what was a regional civil war between Inkatha and
ANC supporters. In a decade from the early 1980s and estimated 15,000
people were killed in political faction fighting. It was by far the
most bloody period in South Africa’s revolution.

The bloodshed was clandestinely and crudely fuelled by what became
known as the “third force”, the apartheid government’s security forces supporting and encouraging Inkatha hotheads in an attempt to undermine
the ANC. Whether Buthelezi actively sought the help of the apartheid
government or whether he tacitly accepted the assistance remained a
bitterly disputed point for decades.

The evidence was eventually overwhelming that white police and
military units had trained Inkatha’s young militants and that
government money had been used to finance Inkatha rallies and the
creation of an Inkatha aligned trade union movement.

Buthelezi’s attempts to transform Inkatha into a national political
force were bedevilled by the labels of “stooge” and “collaborator”
with which the ANC and other revolutionary groups had sought to
discredit him. The proud Zulu chief was pushed to the sidelines during
the negotiations which led to the transition he himself had advocated
as the only real option for a peaceful South African future.

He was petulant and troublesome during the protracted Codesa
(Convention for a Democratic South Africa) negotiations, frequently
storming out of the talks and forming unlikely alliances with the
discredited homeland leaders and even white extremist groups in his
quest to secure a federalist system for the country.


Nelson Mandela recalled that Buthelezi was one of the first of the
people he contacted when he was finally released from prison to thank
him for his long-standing support. “Within ANC circles he was a far
from popular figure,” Mandela wrote in his memoirs, with
characteristic understatement. “He was a thorn in the side of the
democratic movement. He opposed the armed struggle...he campaigned
against international sanctions and challenged the idea of a unitary
state of South Africa. Yet Chief Buthelezi had consistently called for
my release and had refused to negotiate with the government until I
and other political prisoners were liberated.”

Mandela took some personal risk, given the hostilities in Natal, by
visiting Durban shortly after his release. He addressed 100,000 Zulus,
mainly Inkatha supporters, in a sports stadium. “Take your guns, your
knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea,” he urged. “End
this war now!”. His appeal “fell on deaf ears...the fighting and the
dying continued”.

Mandela repeatedly attempted to meet Buthelezi personally in his
efforts to bring an end to the violence but the ANC executive blocked
his initiative, preferring instead to split the loyalties of the
traditional Zulu stronghold by wooing the Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini. The self-indulgent young monarch, apart from being
Buthelezi’s nephew, was politically naive and anxious only to cling to
the lavish trappings of his symbolic office.

By the time the ANC and its allies had won a sweeping victory in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, Buthelezi stood condemned
as a “spoiler” and was derided almost as a figure of fun by most of
the country’s editorial writers and cartoonists. His chiefly pride had
been wounded and his statute as a putative African statesman deeply
dented.

Mandela’s own statesmanship eventually provided some salve for
traditional pride. The Inkatha movement became the Inkatha Freedom
Party to contest the first democratic elections and won political
control of KwaZulu-Natal province. The factional violence subsided.
President Nelson Mandela invited Buthelezi to join his cabinet as home
affairs minister, a post he held for more than a decade after
independence.


When Mandela and his then deputy, Thabo Mbeki, made their frequent
trips abroad to herald the new “rainbow nation” they were happy to
leave the affairs of state in the hands of Acting President Buthelezi.
It was the closest the Zulu leader was to come to his long-held
ambition to become the country’s first black ruler.

Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was born on August 27 1928 in the rural
village of Mahlabatini in the hills north of Ulundi, the capital of
Zulu royalty for centuries. He liked to boast that he was raised in a traditional household, spending hours each day herding cattle and
learning warrior skills in stick fights with other village boys but he
was made aware from an early age that his destiny lay in the rigid
hierarchy of Zulu chieftainship.

His mother, Princess Constance Magogo Zulu, was the granddaughter of
King Cetshwayo, the monarch who had routed the British army at
Islandhwana. His father, Chief Mathole, was the grandson of Chief
Mnyamana Buthelezi, Cetswhayo’s prime minister. His ancestry was
linked to to the legendary Zulu kings like Shaka, hailed as founder of
the Zulu nation and whose military skills, combined with mind numbing brutality, transformed the traditional tribal boundaries of southern
Africa early in the 19th century.

A precociously intelligent youngster, Buthelezi was whisked from the
village primary school to Adams College, a renowned Christian
missionary school south of Durban. There he matriculated with
distinction to be admitted to Fort Hare university in the Eastern
Cape, alma mater of a generation of future African leaders, including
Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Govan Mbeki and Sir Seretse Khama.

Among Buthelezi’s fellow students were Robert Sobukwe, to become
leader of the militant Pan African Congress (PAC) and Robert Mugabe,
an intense young firebrand from Zimbabwe. Their arrival at Fort Hare
in 1948 coincided with the advent to power in South Africa of the
Afrikaner diehards whose National Party was dedicated to the
maintenance of white supremacy in South Africa at any cost.

Fort Hare was awash with revolutionary fervour. Buthelezi, with his
hereditary pride and rebellious nature, came under the influence of
Professor ZK Matthews, the black academic who was the intellectual
driving force behind the ANC. Soon the Zulu chief was a leading
activist in the ANC Youth League. In 1950 he was among a group of
students expelled from the university following a series of protests
and boycotts.

He was permitted to finish his degree in history and “bantu
administration” at Natal University, a distinction which gained him a
job in the Department of Bantu Administration. A few months of lowly
clerking was enough for Buthlezi and he seized the first opportunity
to join a firm of Durban attorneys knowing, as Mandela did, that a
career in law was one of the few career paths then open to aspirant
black politicians.

Hereditary demands saw him return to Mahlabatini to be ceremonially
inducted as head of the Buthelezi tribe, a status that led to him
being appointed chief executive of the newly-established KwaZulu
Territorial Authority, then the KwaZulu Legislative Assemble and
eventually as Chief Minister of KwaZulu. All were political
appointments approved by Pretoria as part of its policy of dividing
South Africa into quasi self-governing tribal states.

This seeming complicity with the apartheid regime raised more than a
few eyebrows and considerable suspicion among the more revolutionary
black activists. By now, the ANC, the PAC and other black militant organisations had been banned and their leaders jailed or forced into
exile. The South African stage was set for a racial confrontation and
yet here was the leader of the country’s largest tribe seemingly
conniving with the white minority government.

Buthelezi, of course, had no intention of following what was then
known as the Uncle Tom route but his belief was that apartheid had to
be fought from within. He was determined to build on his own
unassailable power base among the Zulu people.

He enjoyed his status as chief, even agreeing to take part – as an enthusiastic extra – in the 1963 film Zulu which starred Michael
Caine, Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins. He advised on the script and
gave his full co-operation to the producers, even though the film gave
a slant of imperial glory to the stand by British troops at Rorke’s
Drift after the battle of Isandhlawana.

At this time, Buthelezi was the only extant and visible black leader
able to speak out against government policies. Pretoria was obliged to
indulge him as he was part of the system they had established. Among
the majority of blacks throughout the country he became something of a
national hero.

As the Soviet Union tightened its grip on Africa, where anti-colonial
sentiment provided a convenient and willing receptacle for Cold War
strategic and political expansion, Buthelezi remained as outspoken an anti-communist as he was an opponent of apartheid. His views won him
admiration among conservative groups in the West and he became a
regular visitor to London, Washington and New York.

An articulate black leader of a noble and respected African tribe with anti-communist and pro-free market views made him a favourite of
Western society hostesses. So seductive was he that such entrepreneurs
and socialites like John Aspinall, the London gambling magnate, moved
to South Africa and were deeply moved to be made “honorary Zulus”. (It
must by recorded that although Aspinall put in several appearances at
Inkatha rallies he chose to live on a large estate high on the slopes
of Table Mountain, far from the clamour, dust and bloodshed of
Zululand).

None of this endeared him to the ANC which was now fomenting violent
revolution throughout South Africa’s teeming black townships. A
significant turning point for the country – and for Buthelezi – came
with the 1976 student uprising in Soweto where most of the deaths were
caused by Zulu impis, migrant workers in the hostels, rampaging and
attacking the young protestors in the darkened streets of the township unchecked by the authorities.

During the years of turmoil that followed, Zulu gangs were held
responsible for the slaughter of thousands in the townships of the
Transvaal and throughout Natal, often it seemed with the connivance
and cooperation of the police and security forces. The violence was
matched, if not surpassed, by the ANC activists but increasingly the
names of Inkatha and Buthelezi became linked with counter-revolution
and thuggery on a massive scale.

On the political front, Buthelezi became increasingly shrill. He
claimed that the ANC had declared war on Inkatha, rejecting claims
that his own movement was responsible for much of the rising death
toll in Natal and elsewhere. He railed against sanctions being imposed
on South Africa and in the same breath demanded the release of Nelson
Mandela before he would negotiate with the government.

His ambivalent bluff was called when Mandela was finally released and
the ANC unbanned by President FW de Klerk’s government in 1990. As
South Africa moved into negotiations which would lead inevitable to
majority rule, Buthelezi turned to more desperate measures in an
attempt to secure his status as a putative black leader. These
included acceptance of overt support from the security forces of an
apartheid regime realising it was under siege. It was fatal
politically for the man who would be king and the stain on his
reputation was never fully removed.

Once the ANC had swept to power in the elections and Nelson Mandela
was hailed around the world as a model of statesmanship and racial reconciliation, Buthelezi retreated with no little grace as a gallant
loser. He worked diligently, though not with great success, at his
cabinet portfolio at home affairs and, at subsequent elections,
mounted spirited attacks on the lack of government performance as
leader of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party.

He finally stood down as IFP president in 2019, though he remained a
member of the South African parliament and traditional prime minister
in KwaZulu-Natal until his death.

Autocratic though he remained in his role as Chief of the Zulus,
Buthelezi never showed any inclination to indulge in the profligate
displays of personal wealth ritually exhibited by many African
leaders. His home near Ulundi was owned not by him but by the
Buthelezi tribe. There he lived in a modest, suburban manner with his
wife and family, enjoying during limited spare time an exercise
machine, an impressive collection of classical music and the complete collection of Frank Sinatra albums.

In 1952 Buthelezi married Irene Thandekile Mzila, a nursing sister
from Johannesburg, who died in 2019. They had three sons and four
daughters, of whom two daughters and a son survive him.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, born August 27 1928, died September 9 2023

(reformatted for legibility)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)