MK party could turn Zuma into a new Buthelezi
● The late Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi once said: “So long as the Zulu people are here, clearly I will still have a role in this country.” The chief arrogated to himself the role of championing Zulu nationalist interests. In doing so, he made the Zulu monarchy central to South African politics and culture.
He made the Zulu kingdom part of South African democracy in a way few other Zulu leaders could have managed. While our democracy is a modern expression of the will of the people, Buthelezi infused into its modernity the wisdom of antiquity.
In this role, he was a conduit to the Zulu king. Despite being the leader of a political party — Inkatha, and later the IFP — he tried to be as nonpartisan as possible in his leadership role in the Zulu monarchy. As such, Buthelezi was able to weave himself and the IFP into the national politics of South Africa.
He was, correctly or otherwise, presented in the national political discourse as one of the country’s liberation struggle leaders. His position of power in the Zulu monarchy fed into his political ambitions to lead South Africa — and possibly the continent.
His statement quoted above reveals how he saw himself. He became the voice of the Zulu people from within the monarchy. His political leadership was inextricably linked with his role in the Zulu royal house. This notion developed into Gatsharism, an ideology where political capital is drawn from an ethnic base.
While this ideology has its roots in the period in South African history when ethnic differences among Africans were given institutional expression through self-government and pseudo-independence, it developed into a potent strategy for some leaders to build their careers. Being overtly Zulu nationalist revived the political fortunes of many leaders in South Africa. While Gatsharism is not an exclusively Zulu phenomenon, it thrived in KwaZulu-Natal more than anywhere else.
Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance, the Minority Front and the Freedom Front Plus have all modelled their electoral strategies around ethnic discontent, using this to angle for particular voters.
Tribalism in the ANC for a long time was treated as a demon that needed to be exorcised. It was only after the party ascended to power that it resurfaced in slogans such as “100% Zuluboy”, which emerged in internal ANC leadership contestations. This tribalist tendency became entrenched when the ANC realised that the numerical strength of KwaZulu-Natal voting branches was essential to managing the ANC and keeping it stable.
Consequently, KwaZulu-Natal became the province that had to be won if you wanted to lead the ANC. Its strategic value can be traced back to how Buthelezi drew Zulu-speaking people into a formidable political unit on the basis that “so long as the Zulu people are here, clearly I [and every other Zulu leader] will still have a role in this country”.
From within the ANC, and not of his own design or making, Jacob Zuma became a crucial identity node within the ANC.
The contradictory notion of the Zulu nation within the South African nation state — what King MisuZulu kaZwelithini in his speeches calls uZuluomnyama — has led to the “nation” laying a claim to perpetual representation in national politics. The demand was so strong that Buthelezi — the “nation’s prime minister ”— almost derailed the 1994 national accord for not sufficiently recognising the Zulu monarchy.
Zuma’s arrest in July 2021 remains the single most important indicator of how the “nation” continues to see him in national politics. The “insurrection” was a cry of discontent over how one of the “nation’s” leaders had been treated by the system. In responding to the unrest, the state and the ruling party did not address the substance of that cry. The cost of the insurrection, many analysts have warned, will be felt for years.
The Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party, while not ostensibly a tribalist entity, may easily assume an ethnic character given the natural constituency of Zuma in the absence of Buthelezi in the “nation”. Palace tensions will lead to delays in appointing the “nation’s” prime minister, leaving a vacuum only a Zulu-speaking leader such as Zuma can occupy. Zuma’s stepping into this role would therefore not be by design, but rather by fate.
The reported growth of the MK party in KwaZulu-Natal gives credence to Buthelezi’s pronouncement that “so long as the Zulu people are here, clearly I will still have a role in this country”. The leadership contestations of the previous two ANC conferences were underpinned by this dynamic.
The new MK party will have to work hard to convince South Africans that it is not pursuing a Gatsharist strategy. It will have to act in a way that reassures us that its guiding principle is “so long as the South African people are here, clearly the MK party will still have a role in this country”.