South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, on Saturday, announced the passing of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a Zulu nationalist who positioned himself as Nelson Mandela’s most powerful Black rival. He was 95.
He was admitted to hospital in July following a failed medical procedure to ease his back pain, his family said at the time.
“Prince Buthelezi, who served as democratic South Africa’s first Minister of Home Affairs, passed away in the early hours of today, Saturday, 9 September 2023, just two weeks after the celebration of his 95th birthday,” Ramaphosa said in a statement on Saturday.
According to Ramaphosa, arrangements for his mourning and funeral will be announced after consultations with the Zulu royal family.
“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation,” said Ramaphosa.
Born of royal blood on August 27, 1928, he was for years he was defined by his bitter rivalry with South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), a party that was his political home until he broke away to form IFP in 1975, which he would lead until the age of 90.
As premier of the “independent” homeland of KwaZulu, a political creation of the apartheid government, Buthelezi was often regarded as an ally of the racist regime.
He was dogged by allegations of collaborating with the old government to fuel violence to derail the ANC’s liberation struggle — a claim he furiously denied.
The country’s second-largest opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said in a statement that “his legacy will remain a debate in the South African political terrain for years to come”.
But the EFF commended him for managing “the realms of politics and the Zulu monarchy for decades”.
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In the 1980s, the rift between his party and the ANC intensified as he distanced himself from the movement and its anti-apartheid strategies, denounced by then-jailed Nelson Mandela as undermining the black leadership.
He also stirred the wrath of the liberation movements by calling for increased international investment in South Africa, opposing the call for sanctions to put pressure on the white government.
Mandela appointed him as a minister of home affairs, a position he continued to hold in the second administration of former president Thabo Mbeki.
His legacy has remained a contested one due to the role he played during South Africa’s apartheid era, including heading the administrative region of Zululand, a part of the “homelands” regions that were the cornerstone of the apartheid government’s policy of separate development.
His party was also blamed for the pre-election violence that engulfed the country and the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal before the country’s historic 1994 elections.
Violence between Inkatha supporters and rival liberation groups escalated in the mid-1980s. By 1990, more than 5,000 people had been killed in clashes.
In 1991, Mandela and Buthelezi held talks and called for an end to the bloodshed.
But a year later, reports resurfaced of IFP-fomented violence, backed by apartheid security forces in Johannesburg and in the eastern Natal region.
There was a new surge of unrest between ANC and IFP supporters in the run-up to the first democratic elections in 1994, which claimed about 12,000 lives.
The violence largely dissipated after 1994, with Buthelezi appointed home affairs minister. He went on to become one of the longest-serving lawmakers.
Sending a message of condolences, the ANC said in a statement that it “acknowledges” Buthelezi “had a multifaceted relationship with the ANC and the nation”.
The current IFP leader, Velenkosini Hlabisa, said in a statement that “the IFP gives thanks — even through our tears — for the exceptional leader given to us for so many years. He blessed our country beyond measure. We cannot begin to express our gratitude.”
South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said on X that South Africans had “have lost a founding father”.
AFP