Herbert Vilakazi, who has died in Pretoria at the age of 72, was a prominent professor of sociology who wrote extensively and sometimes controversially on the roots of the conflict between the ANC and Inkatha. He was also once deputy chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission. Vilakazi blamed the "hatred" between the two parties on the refusal of ANC leaders to tell the truth about the role of Inkatha in the anti-apartheid struggle.After encouraging Mangosuthu Buthelezi to start Inkatha, he wrote, the ANC relied on him "to carry the flame of opposition to white supremacy within the legal framework inside the country".He said the role Buthelezi played was supported by the ANC leadership in exile and on Robben Island. But they failed to tell "this truth" to the youth who left South Africa after the 1976 student uprising to join the struggle against the apartheid regime.story_article_left1Vilakazi, who went into exile with his parents in 1957 and became an academic in the US, recounted a conversation he had with ANC president Oliver Tambo in New York in the late '70s.He said Tambo told him he was having "problems with these boys".When he asked him which boys, Tambo told him: "These '76 boys. They say I must stop having relations with Buthelezi. In fact, that I should consider him an enemy."Vilakazi, who was a close friend of Buthelezi's, wrote an analysis ("Isolating Inkatha - A strategic error?") of the conflict in 1991, when it was at its height. He argued that it was the result of an ANC policy to isolate Inkatha.He believed his support of Inkatha cost the life of his wife, Noni, an active ANC supporter. They were driving out of their home in Transkei when she was shot and killed.She would normally have been in the passenger seat but Vilakazi had asked her to drive. He believed the attack was politically motivated and that the bullet was intended for him. Nobody was ever arrested.Vilakazi was born in Nongoma in Zululand on May 18 1943. His father, the noted anthropologist and scholar of African languages Professor Absalom Vilakazi, took the family to live in the US after the apartheid government's imposition of Bantu education.In 1958, Herbert, then 15, wrote to civil rights leader Martin Luther King jnr congratulating him on the recent publication of his book Stride Towards Freedom."I am sure all who read your book (oppressors and perpetrators of Segregation) will be ashamed of themselves," he wrote. He told King that the way black Africans were treated in South Africa was worse than the way African Americans were treated in the southern states of the US.King wrote back: "It is a delight to find one your age so intensely interested in the problems confronting our world."Vilakazi received a BA in 1966 and an MA two years later, both from Columbia University in New York.He taught sociology at Essex County College in New Jersey from 1969 to 1980, when he returned to South Africa and became a popular professor of sociology at the University of Transkei.story_article_right2He circulated socialist pamphlets, organised Marxist reading groups and wrote an article for a prominent US publication, Monthly Review, suggesting that Karl Marx was a black man.His lectures were always packed. But the apartheid regime in Pretoria, which kept a tight rein on the university by ensuring that most administrative posts, including that of vice-chancellor, went to members of the Broederbond, kept a close eye on him.When there was a student uprising in 1984, Vilakazi's lectures and reading groups were blamed. He and several like-minded colleagues were arrested by Transkei president Kaiser Matanzima's security police.When Vilakazi insisted on calling the US embassy, they tried to hand him over to their South African counterparts to deal with. He eventually escaped to Harare and then the US with Buthelezi's help. In New York he obtained the services of a South African human rights lawyer who got permission for him to return to South Africa.After brief stints in the sociology departments at the universities of the Witwatersrand and Cape Town he became head of sociology at the University of Zululand from 1989 to 1998, when Nelson Mandela made him deputy IEC chairman.Vilakazi was a critic of the ANC's economic policy, which he argued had failed to address the colonial legacy of inequality.He admired Mao Zedong and believed South Africa could learn a lot from the Chinese model he developed, even if tens of millions of people died in the process.He acknowledged that "mistakes" were made in the implementation of the model, but said that in essence it was the right way to go.Vilakazi, who had prostate cancer, is survived by seven children.1943-2016..