EVIDENCE IN CHIEF
Buthelezi counters ‘all the nonsense’
Just before the dawn of democracy, a group of us led thousands of pupils from KwaMashu and Ntuzuma townships to the local school’s circuit inspector’s office.
We delivered a memorandum containing a list of demands. It was addressed to the then KwaZulu minister of education, who also happened to be the chief minister of the homeland as well as the president of Inkatha, Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
In the memo, we complained about the overcrowding of classes, the shortage of teachers, lack of safety in schools and an assortment of other problems that were the reality of black education under apartheid.
Subsequent to the march, a couple of us went into hiding, fearing reprisals from the local police.
It’s a trap!
A few weeks later, the unexpected happened. The circuit inspector’s office told us that the education minister had responded.
The response was in the form of a letter, signed by Buthelezi himself. He was inviting us to Ulundi, the homeland’s capital, to discuss the poor state of education in the two Durban townships.
The tone was formal but cordial.
But still, he was inviting us to Ulundi. This was in the early 1990s, at the height of the bloody political conflict between ANC-aligned organisations and Inkatha.
We were members of the KwaMashu Students Representative Council, a branch of the then recently unbanned Congress of South African Students.
My friend Delani and I took the letter to the rest of the organising committee. No ways, it’s a trap, we won’t come back alive, was the consensus.
Some 30 years later, now as a greying newspaperman — and a few days before SA went into lockdown due to the outbreak of Covid-19 — I am on the meandering and scenic R66 highway in Zululand, on my way to Ulundi.
In the intervening years, I have come to admire this tiny and unassuming town for its place in history.
It was here, on July 4 1879, that King Cetshwayo’s army — which had shaken the then mighty British empire by defeating
Lord Chelmsford’s troops at the Battle of Isandlwana — was routed by the vengeful British. Cetshwayo’s palace was burnt down.
That defeat, after which the king was exiled and the kingdom split into 13 chiefdoms, marked the beginning of the colonial subjugation of the region and its people.
When the KwaZulu homeland was established and its preferred capital, Nongoma — the seat of power of the current monarch, King Zwelithini — was deemed unsuitable for a capital because it lacked basic infrastructure, Buthelezi pushed for Ulundi on the grounds that he wanted the pre-colonial capital to “rise from the ashes like a phoenix”.
But it was precisely because of Ulundi’s close association with Buthelezi and his role in the homeland system that the ANC and its allies vehemently opposed all attempts to have the town declared the capital of KwaZulu-Natal after 1994.
I have always wondered what would have happened to me and the other student representatives had we accepted the Ulundi invitation in the early 1990s.
But most importantly, as a political journalist with a keen interest in the country’s history, I had always wanted an indepth interview with this politician whose career spans seven decades.
He has seen it all. From cutting his political teeth under the tutelage of his relative, ANC founder Pixley ka Isaka Seme, and Nobel peace prize-winning struggle icon Albert Luthuli, to having a war of words with apartheid-era prime ministers and presidents John Vorster and PW Botha, to being accused of being a traitor to
Who knows how history would have changed had Thabo Mbeki succeeded in having Buthelezi as his deputy?
the struggle for liberation and ending up in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet as a minister.
He may never have been a head of state, but Buthelezi is the only politician since 1994 to have had the dubious honour of sending the South African National Defence Force to do battle in another country — Lesotho, in 1997.
Who knows how the course of history would have changed had then president Thabo Mbeki succeeded in his bid, in 1999, to have Buthelezi as his deputy?
Had it not been for the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal telling Mbeki not to pick the Inkatha Freedom Party leader unless Buthelezi agreed to give the premiership of the then IFP-controlled province to the ANC, Buthelezi would have moved to OR Tambo House in Pretoria. Like most inside and outside the ANC, Buthelezi suspects the hand of one Jacob Zuma in collapsing the deal. Zuma, of course, went on to become Mbeki’s deputy — putting him in a much stronger position to later challenge for the presidency.
“And the rest,” says Buthelezi with laughter as he thinks back to that period,•“is history.”
‘The nonsense written about me’
We are at the IFP’s head office in Ulundi, a nondescript building that one could easily mistake for a warehouse were it not for the big party logo on its walls.
Buthelezi’s motorcade of three cars arrived without any of the fanfare that has become synonymous with our “blue lights” politicians. No petrol-guzzling 4x4s. He is chauffeured in a 1990s BMW 5-series sedan that has seen better days.
Later he tells me that all the years he spent in politics did not make him rich: “In these positions, even in the homelands, you’d find that people got rich, people bought farms. I live in a house which was built by my traditional council. I don’t have a farm or anything, or any other form of income.”
It was shortly after the 91-year-old stepped down as IFP president in August last year — from a post he held for 44 years — that I sought to interview him.
After an exchange of letters, he finally agreed we could meet in Ulundi. But this was not before he gave me some homework.
“It has been difficult for me to read all the nonsense written about me in the media over many years, not least in the Sowetan and the Sunday Times. I therefore always welcome opportunities to set the record straight and to enlighten readers on who I am and what I have done for our people,” he wrote.
He continued: “I find, however, that at my age I am tiring of taking interviewers through ABCs again and again … I therefore ask your indulgence. I would send you some reading material to peruse, which will enable us to enjoy a productive interview.”
Torpedo apartheid from within
Among the material is a paper by the late professor Herbert Vilakazi in which he argues that the ANC and the IFP “are separate branches of one family” and that it was “the third force, both local and international” that played “a leading role in splitting this family”.
Buthelezi also recommended Anthea Jeffery’s People’s War, a book that puts much of the blame for the 20,500 lives lost to political violence between 1984 and 1994 firmly at the door of the ANC.
Her central argument is that the “black-on-black” violence was instigated by the ANC after its official visit to communist-ruled Vietnam, where it adopted the doctrine of a “people’s war” that, she argues, promoted seizing power through — among other things — destroying political rivals like the IFP.
From the onset of the interview, it is clear that Buthelezi wants to tackle head-on the issues that he feels have been misrepresented and that, as a result, have robbed him of his place among the icons of the liberation struggle.
Chief among these is the charge that he was a “traitor” because he agreed to participate in the homeland system, therefore legitimising the apartheid system.
He did so at the instruction of Luthuli and his then deputy in the ANC, Oliver Tambo.
Buthelezi tells an elaborate story about how
Tambo and Luthuli, who were in Wadeville, Benoni, at the time, sent ANC member Cleopas Nsibande to Buthelezi’s sister Morgina and her husband, Dr Exdras Mafu Dotwana, to pass on a message that: “I should not refuse if it happened that amakhosi and izinduna elected me as their first leader of the homeland government.”
Buthelezi was a member of the ANC at the time. “They said I must not refuse because they hoped that I would torpedo [the apartheid system] from within,” Buthelezi says.
‘Honorary whites’
Even after the ANC was banned and the likes of Tambo were forced into exile, Buthelezi says, he continued to operate as an ANC member. He points to his visit to London in the 1960s, when he met Tambo and several other members of the ANC and, for his sins, returned to SA only to have his passport confiscated.
For a 91-year-old, Buthelezi still has a sharp memory. You should hear him tell the story of Malawi president Hastings Banda’s controversial 1971 state visit to SA.
“He came here and then he insisted that on the last day, when he holds the banquet to say goodbye, he’d have black guests. He said he could not hold the banquet without black guests.
“They looked around and homeland leaders were suddenly looked at as honorary whites and were allowed to the dinner. I remember the media had a wonderful time taking pictures of Dr Banda and Miss [Cecilia] Kadzamira who was the hostess because Banda was a bachelor.”
It was after this meeting that Banda invited Buthelezi and then Bophuthatswana leader Lucas Mangope to Malawi. The state issued Buthelezi with a passport because it could not say he was a head of government and then refuse him permission to travel.
Although Banda was condemned throughout Africa for having relations with the Vorster regime, Buthelezi credits him with facilitating his clandestine meeting with Tambo in Malawi.
“And when we met Tambo there, you know what his message was? He said I was rocking the boat too much, he thinks that I must start even criticising the ANC.”
Economic sanctions
Even the formation of Inkatha as a political party, Buthelezi says, was at the instigation of the ANC and then Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda:
“KK then says to me, ‘You know we as frontline, we appreciate that in South Africa you have become the only voice for our people … While we admire that, it is not enough.’ He said they want me to get back to South Africa and start a membership-based organisation.
“I was a member of the ANC! I said to myself, how can he say I must found another organisation when I am ANC? So I had to consult Tambo, who said I must go ahead.”
This is why, he adds, Inkatha in the 1970s and ’80s used the same colours as the then banned ANC. “We were actually defying the law by introducing ANC colours”.
So, if Inkatha was started as the ANC’s internal wing and with the support of other leaders on the continent, how did relations become so sour that thousands of lives had to be lost as a result of violence between the two parties?
Buthelezi puts it down to his refusal to support economic sanctions against SA as well as the decision not to back the armed struggle.
The matter was discussed at a meeting in London between the two organisations in November 1979, when it became clear that there were differences.
Buthelezi says he also asked about some ANC members who were publicly calling him a “traitor” for being part of the homeland system, and Tambo promised to get back to him on the issue.
“But in fact he never came back to me. Sadly, on
June 25 1980 in London, the secretary-general of the ANC, Alfred Nzo, launched a scathing attack on me … Then after that I would say the sluice gates were opened because I was then attacked through Radio Freedom, their publication Sechaba and through all sorts of things.”
Nelson Mandela, who was still in prison at the time but communicated with Buthelezi through letters, suggested that the Inkatha leader go to Lusaka for a meeting with Tambo.
Buthelezi declined to go because of rumours that the ANC planned to have him killed.
Free Nelson Mandela
Despite the conflict with the ANC, Buthelezi says he remained faithful to the cause, even convincing the other homeland leaders to push for Mandela’s release from prison as a condition for negotiations.
At a 1974 meeting with Vorster and the other homeland leaders, he says, he brought the issue up.
“I can still remember when I raised the subject with him face to face, Vorster said: ‘Mandela boasted during the trial in Rivonia that he was a communist and if there is one thing that my father taught me it was not to put a snake into my bosom, and as long as I am prime minister I will never release him.’ ”
He would have done the same with Vorster’s successor, PW Botha, but his relationship with him was frosty.
Botha’s successor, FW de Klerk, freed Mandela in 1990.
“You can check it in Hansard in parliament. That’s why De Klerk, when announcing the release of Madiba, the only name he mentioned was mine as having helped him in making the decision.”
‘Bantustan leader’
Buthelezi is critical of those who elevate former political prisoners, exiles and those who took up arms above others who helped free the country.
“In fact it is not true that it is they who liberated us, as is popularly said. It was the cumulative effect of various things that were done at different levels, even by liberals … people like Helen Suzman.”
For his part, Buthelezi believes he accomplished the mission given to him by Tambo and Luthuli — that of preventing KwaZulu from becoming “an independent state”.
But he blames the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal for portraying him as a Bantustan leader. He lists a series of instances where party leaders in the province scuppered attempts at reconciliation between him and the national ANC leadership.
These range from the late Midlands leader Harry Gwala apparently organising “a bus-full” of local leaders to go to the ANC headquarters to stop Mandela holding a joint peace rally with Buthelezi in the early 1990s, to them blocking the 1999 deputy presidency deal.
“They have always been a fly in the ointment. I can name many other instances where in fact they aborted agreements.”
Meeting Ramaphosa
He reveals that in December he had a lengthy meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his capacity as ANC leader, where they discussed Buthelezi’s relationship with the party he grew up in.
But what would he like to see happen?
“I have said, on my part, having lived this long and expecting to go any time, I would be very happy if I close my eyes and the relations between me and the ANC are normalised … I have given the whole history of what happened and they were not fair to me. They have not done so for many years.”
Should reconciliation mean a merger of the two parties?
“In fact when we were talking about reconciliation, Mr Zuma himself talked about merging, which was something we were not talking about. If that happens I don’t mind.
“But I am not talking about that now … Inkatha has got its own leaders now and if at any time [they] decide that way, it would be their decision, but that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about normalised relations.”
We spend several hours with him, during which he takes us on a tour that includes the nearby Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Museum and Documentation Centre, the old KwaZulu legislature, before we proceed to have lunch at the Garden Court Ulundi.
When I tell Buthelezi about the memorandum we sent to him in the 1990s and his response to it, he laughs out loud and says he remembers it.
I ask what he thought would have happened to us if we had come to Ulundi. He says, “I don’t know what would have happened” but that education was something he was passionate about.
The suggestion is that this, of course, was the sole purpose of his invitation.
And when we met Tambo there, you know what his message was? He said I was rocking the boat too much, he thinks that I must start even criticising the ANC