JUSTICE MALALA | Mangosuthu Buthelezi: his portrayal as a man of peace was a myth

If Mangosuthu Buthelezi had succeeded in his 1990s campaign of mayhem, obstruction and even murder, the new South Africa would not have been born. As preparations for his burial proceed this week, one of the many falsehoods that will be peddled about the Inkatha Freedom Party leader who died on Saturday is that he was one of the architects of our post-1994 democracy.

Buthelezi worked tirelessly to project this myth. The older he got the harder he worked to pass himself off as a man of peace who should be elevated to the stature of Nelson Mandela or Albert Luthuli. Some believed him, too. In 2017, when Buthelezi claimed he would step down from the leadership of the IFP (he did this many times, but clung on to power nonetheless), then DA leader Mmusi Maimane said: “As one of the foremost leaders in our nation’s transition to democracy, he played a key role in creating a framework for a negotiated solution to the racial conflict in South Africa.”

The truth is that Buthelezi did everything in his power to stop the April 27 1994 election from taking place. From the beginning of the formal negotiations process in 1990, his IFP was used by apartheid top brass to create an intransigent, anti-democracy wall within the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) talks. Outside the halls of the formal negotiations, in the townships and villages, the IFP became a bloodthirsty counterpoint to the ANC that was held up to the international community as allegedly a liberal, capitalist, “reasonable”, voice of the black masses. IFP leaders such as the feared Themba Khoza (who was arrested with machine guns and ammunition at the scene of one of the Sebokeng massacres where 39 people were killed) and government agents such as Eugene de Kock delivered war materials and trained IFP killers in camps in KwaZulu-Natal.

In his Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty application, for example, De Kock gave times and places where apartheid government operatives delivered war materials to IFP leaders Philip Powell, Khoza and Humphrey Ndlovu. Between 1990 and April 1994 at least 13,000 people were killed in political violence in SA — fuelled by the IFP and apartheid secret police.

Buthelezi did nothing to achieve peace. It was only on April 19 1994, seven days before the election, that he agreed to participate. He realised that he had lost his war of obstruction.

Buthelezi did nothing to achieve peace. It was only on April 19 1994, seven days before the election, that he agreed to participate. He realised that he had lost his war of obstruction.

“I think Mr Buthelezi looked over the brink and blinked,” famed political scientist Robert Schrire said at the time.

Buthelezi was not finished with violence, though. There is one incident that has always come back to me in my many interactions with Buthelezi since 1994. It always reminded me that this was a man of violence.

The incident took place on April 23 1994, four days after Buthelezi had agreed to take part in elections. Believing that free electioneering was allowed, the ANC sent 10 of its canvassers to Buthelezi’s stronghold, Ulundi, to drum up support. They were armed only with pamphlets and posters of their party.

A Human Rights Watch report at the time said: “As they began handing out election leaflets, they were surrounded by a crowd. Shots were fired and two ANC supporters were hit: one was killed immediately or then beaten to death, the other burnt to death in his vehicle.”

The survivors fled to a place of safety — the Ulundi Police Station. More than 200 IFP members surrounded the building. An ANC lawyer, John Wills, arrived at the station and negotiated with Buthelezi for the ANC and IEC staffers’ safe passage out of the station in police armoured vehicles. As they left, they realised that one person was missing: ANC member Msizi Julian Mchunu.

The Human Rights Watch report continued: “Wills returned to the police station, where he found blood in the corridor. Wills appealed for help to the police and to Chief Buthelezi, but his requests for assistance in discovering the fate of Mchunu were ignored and Buthelezi’s bodyguards pushed him away.”

Wills did not know this at the time, but Mchunu had been shot in the back at point blank range. The KwaZulu police, of whom Buthelezi was in charge, claimed that the blood Wills found on the walls of the police station were from a drunk who had come into the station off the street after being stabbed. Later they said Mchunu had committed suicide with his own gun. Later a prison warder emerged, mysteriously, and claimed that he had killed Mchunu. In the past 29 years, Buthelezi never lifted a finger, or said a word, to get to the bottom of the murder of a man who was in the same room as him.

That’s the Buthelezi I always remember. There are thousands of victims of Buthelezi’s war to stop our democracy being born. Who speaks for them? Who speaks for Mchunu, murdered in cold blood on the eve of freedom, in front of Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his bodyguards?