No more letters from Shenge
Mangosuthu Buthelezi was a formidable opponent who gave as good as he got
Thursday. I do not have anything bad to say about Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) founder Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a man with whom I have enjoyed what could best be described as an adversarial relationship for most of my adult life.
I have expressed more than my fair share of critical — often negative, sometimes derogatory — opinions about Shenge, the traditional honorific by which he was respectfully known — over the years, when he was alive and able to respond.
For me to do so now, when he can no longer take me to task for it, would be wrong, an act of cowardice, a show of disrespect to a formidable opponent who gave as good as he got, right up until the very end — and towards myself.
For nearly 40 years there has been an exchange of words — stories and columns on my part, and letters to the editor, legal demands and press statements on that of Shenge — between the two of us.
Inevitably, and sadly, that has now come to an end.
I first encountered the Prince of kaphindangene, one of the many titles by which the former Kwazulu chief minister and founder of Inkatha yenkululeko yesizwe, the forerunner of the IFP, was known, in 1986.
Shenge was Kwazulu chief minister then — as well as minister of police and minister of economic development. He was a busy man
and the darling of the mainstream media establishment, their great hope as a bulwark between their interests and the ANC.
A busy man, but not too busy to straighten out a 21-year-old African affairs correspondent — it was The Natal Mercury after all — with the temerity to describe his attack on then ANC president Oliver Tambo in a speech as an attack.
A few hours after the article appeared, Shenge read it out in the legislative assembly, along with a letter to the editor pointing out that it was Tambo, and not him, who had
initiated hostilities, and that his comments were a response and not an attack.
Proof was dispatched by an assembly messenger in the form of photocopies of Sechaba, Dawn and Mayibuye, with Tambo’s offending statements underlined for emphasis, along with a signed, handwritten note on Buthelezi’s personalised stationery.
It was my first letter from Shenge — one of many.
I stopped counting letters from Shenge at about 20 epistles to the editor — all of which were copied to the author in person.
That was late last century, so I honestly have no idea how many he penned in response to what I wrote about him over the years.
Most of them have been lost — bad move — but there are a couple of goodies, recent ones, that have survived.
From the beginning, I was not what Shenge had expected.
My predecessor and the paper were part of the Old Natal Family set-up and were supportive of Inkatha, so my perspective — and my failure to toe the line — set off alarm bells with Shenge.
After the Tambo incident, and a few other transgressions on my part, Buthelezi treated me as an adversary or an opponent; as an activist involved in plotting his demise, rather than as a journalist.
If one is to be honest, Shenge was not wrong.
Neither were Siegfried Bhengu, Ntwe Mafole and the rest of the crew who gave me an ultimatum to get out of Ulundi if I wanted to stay alive during a Stimela concert at the Unit A stadium one Sunday evening not long afterwards.
Look, Listen and Decide.
Those Sechabas, Dawns and Mayibuyes Shenge handed me ended up in the right hands, just not the ones he intended them to reach; they played their role in the battle of ideas, but with a result different from the one he had set out to achieve.
That’s where it all started, with Shenge and I, a you-touch-me,-itouch-you that lasted nearly 40 years.
But now it’s over, finished, done, except for a final farewell on Saturday.
It was appropriate that I was halfway down the stairs last weekend, fishing rod in hand, when the notification came from the presidency that Buthelezi had died.
After all, Shenge has been spoiling my weekends and public holidays and derailing my plans since 1986, so why stop now, even in death?
There was a smile on my face — and to be honest, a tear in my eye, as there is now — as I headed upstairs to boot up the laptop and write the obituary I always knew I would write.
My day ruined, one last time.
One last hurrah, Mr Harper, as the man himself would have said.
Lala ngoxolo, Shenge.
For nearly 40 years there has been an exchange of words between the two of us. Sadly that has now come to an end