‘The IFP was in the struggle with the ANC’
● Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s successor, Velenkosini Hlabisa, wants the ANC to help him clean up the image of the IFP by admitting that its propaganda machinery was behind the tarnishing of his party’s image.
Hlabisa told the Sunday Times he wants to rebrand the IFP, but that would require a “reconciliation project” with the ANC.
He wants the ANC to accept that the IFP was formed with its blessing and that Buthelezi’s appointment as KwaZulu prime minister was “an ANC deployment”.
Hlabisa last weekend inherited a party tainted by a history of clashes with the ANC, thereby seen to be siding with the apartheid regime during the struggle.
Although founding leader Buthelezi used every opportunity to deny any association with the apartheid regime, the dominant narrative has placed the IFP as an opponent of the liberation movements.
This is what Hlabisa aims to change, and he told the Sunday Times the IFP had already approached the ANC to correct this history.
Hlabisa said the ANC would have to admit that Buthelezi, a former member of the ANC Youth League, formed the IFP in 1975 with the blessing of then ANC leaders.
“There is a team discussing the matter at a senior level between the ANC and the IFP.
“They need to finalise the discussion to create a new chapter because we have gone through the elections,” he said.
Hlabisa said the IFP was formed to fight apartheid within the country as ANC leaders were in exile.
However, disagreements emerged on how to wage the struggle.
“Now the ANC has never openly come out to say ‘yes, Prince Mangosuthu was sent by us to go be a chief minister’.
“Because he has been called names for accepting that deployment, we are now saying the ANC must own its deployment. That will be the beginning of reconciliation,” Hlabisa said.
He said that despite the IFP having been fully against apartheid, it could not wage an armed struggle within the country and simultaneously exist as a membership-based organisation without being obliterated by the apartheid regime.
“That is why the IFP chose to use peaceful means to block the system from within, because we can’t fight from the inside — you would be arrested, killed or sent to prison and there won’t be any meaningful opposition to apartheid. And there was also never a war that was waged from outside that succeeded,” he argued.
However, the biggest stain on the history of the IFP, according to Hlabisa, is the perception that the IFP was a violent Zulu nationalist party. This perception, he said, was created in order to contain the IFP’s presence in KwaZulu-Natal.
“If you go to Sisonke [a municipality in the south of KZN] there are people who do not want to allow the IFP to exist ... Go to Eastern Cape, there are people who feel that when you bring the IFP you bring something that should not be part of our country.”
IFP supporters last weekend descended on Ulundi, capital of the erstwhile KwaZulu bantustan, to pay homage to Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as he finally bowed out from the helm of the party he founded and led for almost half a century. It’s an extraordinary innings whose longevity is rivalled only by the likes of Paul Biya of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who turned their respective countries into personal fiefdoms.
Come to think of it, even Robert Mugabe, the bane of democrats, came on the scene, hung around for a few decades, and then departed — with Buthelezi still calling the shots. And he has seen off a few pretenders to the throne during his time.
The exit of a leader who’s been part of SA’s political furniture for so long is a seminal event that deserves to be acknowledged, whether one approves of his record or not. A whole forest would have to be sacrificed to do justice to such a career. Retirement is probably not the right word, for although Buthelezi has given up party leadership, at 91, he’s staying put in parliament. There’s still life in the old geezer, it seems.
Buthelezi is not an uncontroversial figure. He joined bantustan politics, he claims, at the behest of the ANC — word had come from Albert Luthuli himself apparently — in order to frustrate the system. However, he turned out to be the organisation’s bitterest enemy as their respective supporters fought pitched battles, especially in KwaZulu-Natal and single-sex hostels on the Reef, where thousands died and many more were maimed in the 1980s. Somebody told him the ANC was out to kill him — and he wore it like a badge of honour. He saw himself as the moderate alternative to what was then seen as a terrorist organisation.
Buthelezi almost derailed the transition to democracy when he teamed up with Conservative Party leader Andries Treurnicht and homeland leaders such as Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana and Ciskei’s Oupa Gqozo, to form Cosag, in what was a blatant attempt to sabotage the first democratic elections in 1994.
Many believed Buthelezi was suing for secession or a break-up of the country. He complained that Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini was not being accorded his rightful place in the new dispensation. To some, that was code for the Zulus to go it alone with KwaZulu-Natal as an autonomous state. What was clear, however, was that Cosag was a bunch of apartheid apologists; living large in the lap of the system was soon going to be a thing of the past, and they were determined to stop it.
Luckily, sense prevailed, and the IFP joined the freedom train days before elections. There was a collective sigh of relief as civil strife was averted.
Last Saturday, Buthelezi was in a reflective mood, his supporters eating out of his hand. He was not making a speech, he said, but giving testimony.
He cast the formation of Inkatha — and its mission — as merely the continuation of the age-old struggle against colonialism, land dispossession and apartheid waged by luminaries such as Cetshwayo and Sekhukhune. As the only high-profile leader left in the country after the banning of the ANC, he claimed he was requested to take part in apartheid structures in order to stop the system in its tracks. Such an assertion, however, flies in the face of reality, because in 1975 when Inkatha was formed, the Black Consciousness movement was in full bloom. Organisations such as the Black People’s Convention shunned the system and wanted nothing to do with homeland leaders such as Buthelezi. It was these organisations, among others, which controversially chased Buthelezi from Robert Sobukwe’s funeral in Graaff-Reinet in 1978.
Buthelezi also argued rather unconvincingly that by taking part in the system, he thwarted the Balkanisation not only of KwaZulu but of the whole country. But it can be argued that his participation gave legitimacy to a system designed to disenfranchise black people. And, why, if he was against “independence”, did he demand that people take out so-called KwaZulu citizenship? His argument that he was against independence for his bantustan and therefore legit is nothing but a figleaf. It didn’t matter in the end because independent or not, these territories all became part of a unified SA.
By his telling, he was squeaky clean. He walked with the angels. He stayed the course. It was the likes of Oliver Tambo and the ANC who went off the rails. There was no mention of his intolerance and his thin skin: the expulsion of Barney Dladla from his government for marching with striking workers in Durban; the fallout with Sibusiso Bengu for sticking with students at the University of Zululand; forcing medical students to sign a pledge of allegiance to him as a condition to get their bursaries; Inkatha’s refusal to help victims of forced removals despite the fact that the province was the most affected by this inhumane policy.
And of course there was the violence: the thousands killed and maimed by marauding Inkatha impis up and down the province. Inkatha hit squads trained by apartheid soldiers in the Caprivi Strip so that they could come back and cause mayhem in the country. These things, inconvenient truths, were never mentioned.
Buthelezi has mellowed with age. As other politicians seem to lose their minds, he’s tended to play the role of the elder statesman, the peacemaker, the voice of reason, especially in the madness of our parliament. The father of parliament, he loves to have his ego stroked. No longer the bully who wades into a fight and then blames the victim for his bruised knuckles.
But those looking for candour — and remorse — in Buthelezi’s valedictory last weekend would have been disappointed.