In last week's article, "Honour the aged by all means, but let's be frank about Buthelezi's past", political editor Sibongakonke Shoba writes about my birthday dinner.
About the speakers, including the premier of KwaZulu-Natal, the minister of energy, former president FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela's daughter and the son of the first president of Zambia, Shoba writes: "I couldn't help but wonder if [they] were talking about the same man I knew growing up."
The answer, Mr Shoba, is, "No, they weren't", because you didn't know me when you were growing up. You knew the fabricated image of a monster, created by the ANC's propaganda.
As Mandela admitted in April 2002: "We have used every ammunition to destroy [Buthelezi], but we failed. And he is still there. He is a formidable survivor. We cannot ignore him."
I feel it important to disabuse Shoba of the propaganda that still misleads him, because his position as political editor demands a foundation of truth.
Let me begin with the TRC. He writes: "Buthelezi has always denied any involvement in . attacks, even though testimony at the [Truth & Reconciliation Commission] painted a different picture."
Not a single shred of evidence was produced at the TRC that I was involved in any attack, act of violence or human rights abuses. I never committed, ordered, authorised, sanctioned or condoned any act of violence. The TRC could not implicate me. It could do no more than condemn me "in my representative capacity" as a leader.
Unlike many ANC leaders, I never sought amnesty from the TRC.
More than half the ANC's cabinet members received blanket amnesty for "grave violations of human rights". Defined by law, this means murder, torture or mayhem.
I refused to apply because I had nothing to disclose. I asked that the state charge me if I had orchestrated any criminal act. Not a single charge was ever brought. I don't have a "brutal past".
Shoba's reference to "IFP impis" is misguided. No such thing existed. An impi is a regiment. Unlike the ANC's Umkhonto weSizwe, the IFP never had an armed wing because we rejected violence as a political tool.
It was this that caused the divide between the ANC's mission in exile and Inkatha. We refused to allow Inkatha structures to be used to channel weapons and trained guerrilla soldiers into SA.
Shoba's portrayal of "that Sunday evening" in 1993 is rife with propaganda. He claims: "We later learnt that our attackers had been bristling for action after being addressed by IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi at a rally in Durban."
On Sunday May 9 1993 violence erupted in KwaMashu as people were returning from a rally called by the king. As traditional prime minister to the Zulu nation, it is my duty to introduce the king whenever he speaks to his people. This was not an IFP rally and I was not the main speaker.
So why am I singled out, and what did I supposedly say that could have sparked violence? Shoba owes us some answers.
It is not surprising, nor incriminating, that some people wore IFP T-shirts that day. The IFP had more than a million members.
Shoba claims that repackaging history to elevate me as a struggle hero "is a bridge too far". Let's look at the history. In February 1990, when De Klerk announced his decision to release Mandela and other political prisoners, he admitted that it was me who had convinced him to do so. Before the TRC, he admitted that it was my rejection of independence for KwaZulu that had collapsed the grand scheme of apartheid.
As a Commonwealth eminent person, Olusegun Obasanjo visited Mandela on Robben Island and asked him who I was. Mandela answered: "Buthelezi is a freedom fighter in his own right".
When President Joachim Chissano heard my condemnation of apartheid, he asked Oliver Tambo who I was. Tambo told him: "That is our man."
I was welcomed by heads of state throughout Africa: by president Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, by president Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, by Obasanjo in Nigeria, by Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, and by the kings of Swaziland and Lesotho. President Hastings Banda invited me to celebrate Malawi's independence. In Liberia, president William Tolbert bestowed on me a national order.
Internationally, I was welcomed by prime minister Margaret Thatcher, by US presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, by chancellor Helmut Kohl in Germany and prime minister Joop Den Uyl in Holland.
How could any of this have happened if my liberation credentials were in doubt? These leaders knew the truth about me.
Sadly, when Shoba compares the propaganda with the truth, he prefers the propaganda.
Hearing the truth from the premier of KwaZulu-Natal, he accuses the premier of amnesia and "the airbrushing of history". He feels his own conclusions are obvious and apparent. But when you start from a foundation of lies, you don't end at the truth.
Only ignorance can accuse me of leading a bantustan. Tambo and Luthuli asked me to lead KwaZulu so that we could undermine apartheid from within. I did this by refusing to accept independence for KwaZulu. While the bantustans gave up citizenship of SA, KwaZulu remained part of SA territory. It was never a bantustan.
Believing propaganda is one thing. Creating it is quite another. Shoba becomes guilty when he misquotes my remarks at my birthday dinner.
The record shows that I said: "My conscience is clear as far as my pilgrimage is concerned. There are very few things I wouldn't do again, if given the chance. Like any human being, I have made mistakes. But I have no regrets concerning my political career."
Shoba misquotes this to read: "There are a few things I wouldn't do again if I was given a chance to repeat them." He then makes a meal out of my apparent regrets, faults, mistakes and need to apologise.
We all have pain from the past, Mr Shoba. But you won't find healing by abusing your platform, launching unwarranted attacks or spreading lies. Healing only comes by accepting the truth.
• Buthelezi is president of the IFP..