Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a veteran South African politician and Zulu prince, has died at the age of 95, the presidency said on Saturday.
The founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party served two terms as home affairs minister in the post-apartheid government after burying the hatchet with the ruling African National Congress party (ANC) in 1994.
“I am deeply saddened to announce the passing of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Prince of KwaPhindangene, the Traditional Prime Minister of the Zulu Monarch and Nation, and the Founder and President Emeritus of the Inkatha Freedom Party,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. declaration.
Buthelezi, who was a controversial figure during the struggle for liberation from apartheid, underwent a procedure for back pain in July and was later readmitted to hospital when the pain did not subside, according to local news website News24.
He founded the IFP in 1975 as a national cultural movement that became a political force in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province, and his party was involved in bloody conflicts with the ANC in the 1980s and 1990s.
His last-minute decision to participate in the first post-apartheid elections in 1994 brought peace between the two parties. The vote brought the ANC and its leader, the late Nelson Mandela, to power after decades of white minority rule.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation said Buthelezi’s life intersected with Mandela’s at several points and that his legacy was “imposing and complex”.
“In many ways, the two leaders embodied an understanding of a reconciliation that did not require forgiveness, nor forgetting the past, nor even learning to like each other – it was simply about deciding to move forward together, The foundation reported this in a statement.
South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), described Buthelezi as a “great leader”.
“Prince Buthelezi was a giant in South Africa’s political landscape,” said DA leader John Steenhuisen.
Buthelezi grew up in a traditional household and spent his early years as a shepherd boy. In 1953 he was installed as acting head of the prominent Buthelezi clan and confirmed as leader four years later.
He was married to Irene Mzila, a nurse, who eschewed the polygamy followed by many Zulu leaders. They had three sons and four daughters.
ANC rivalry
Buthelezi was a champion of his people and a prominent figure in the fight against apartheid, but his rivalry with the ANC led to difficult days and much bloodshed before South Africa could elect its first black leader.
Critics called Buthelezi a “warlord,” but to his legion of followers in the rural Zulu heartland he was a visionary.
Ten years before the end of white rule in 1994, Buthelezi – dressed in leopard skins and brandishing a short silver-tipped stick – was a familiar face at rallies while Inkatha was embroiled in a conflict with the ANC.
About 20,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes as fighting raged in KwaZulu and in men’s hostels built to house migrant workers working in the gold mines near Johannesburg.
The price of peace was Buthelezi’s participation in a unity government as Minister of the Interior – a ministry that under his watch became a byword for corruption and incompetence.
“It’s not pleasant, it’s not easy for me. It is not easy for President Thabo Mbeki either [Mandela’s successor] to have me and my colleagues in the cabinet. We did it to end a low-intensity civil war,” Buthelezi told Reuters in an interview in July 2003.
He also took on other roles outside politics.
Buthelezi played his own great-grandfather, King Cetshwayo, in the 1964 film Zulu, which immortalized the 1879 defense of Rorke’s Drift by British troops against thousands of Zulu warriors, but also spread the image of the Zulus as mighty warriors beyond South Africa.
Long-winded speeches
Longevity marked his political career. Only in 2019 did he step down as leader of the IFP at the age of 90. Long-winded speeches were a Buthelezi trademark. Delivered in Zulu or English, they could continue for hours.
Buthelezi attended the Black University of Fort Hare from 1948 to 1950, joined the ANC Youth League and rubbed shoulders in lecture halls with many of the movement’s future leaders. He was deported because of his political activities there.
His political power would be forged in KwaZulu ‘Bantustan’, one of the so-called self-governing homelands based on tribalism – islands of rural poverty where most black South Africans were literally confined under apartheid.
Buthelezi, a Zulu chief, became chief minister of KwaZulu in the 1970s, where he attempted a delicate balancing act: refusing outright independence and criticizing Pretoria’s racial policies, while still playing a role in the homeland’s farce.
It was too much for the ANC, whose exile leaders tried to woo him throughout the 1970s before giving up in the face of opposition to what was seen as Buthelezi’s collaboration with the apartheid regime.