Buthelezi: no middle ground

THERE is an old Latin maxim – De mortuis nil nisi bonum – which is the origin of the modern injunction not to speak ill of the dead. It is an instruction premised on fair play because the dead have no mouths with which to defend themselves.

It is a concept many South Africans will have struggled with this week following the death of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the founder of the IFP and prime minister to the Zulu king.

Like many characters in contemporary South African history, Buthelezi was a deeply divisive figure; a heroic, principled and courageous leader to those who adored him; and an evil, vain and vicious apartheid collaborator to those who despised him.

There is no middle ground.

His legacy is far more nuanced, but this will only become apparent in time once ardours have cooled, which makes Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi’s eulogy of the prince this week that much more problematic. The one-time intellectual darling of the populist EFF was in full pulpit mode as he exhorted a mostly IFP audience to remember Buthelezi’s more positive traits as one of the architects of South Africa’s successful peaceful transition to political liberation, decrying any examination of the much darker side of his history as the work of those who would seek to divide South Africans by destroying his legacy.

Ndlozi is, of course, entitled to his view, were it not for one thing: his PhD degree – of which he rightly extremely proud – was premised on a thesis that excoriated Buthelezi for his role in establishing the IFP and working with the apartheid regime’s security apparatus to destabilise the country and especially the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal industrial heartland through bloodshed and mayhem.

In a world of increasing hypocrisy and opportunism, this really takes the cake. But for the EFF, it’s actually par for the course.

And what of Buthelezi’s legacy? It depends on who you ask.