Inkatha ‘hit squads’ a lie

I admire Carol Paton’s willingness to let me speak for myself, though my long and complex life is difficult to summarise (“Buthelezi: Tambo tainted my legacy”, September 16).

Unfortunately, the part she chose to summarise is misleading. This relates to the ANC’s people’s war, which was turned against Inkatha in the late 1980s and early 1990s, claiming about 20,000 black lives.

Unlike the ANC’s uMkhonto weSizwe, Inkatha never had a military wing. We rejected an armed struggle and refused to adopt violence as a political strategy. Yet the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by the former patron of the United Democratic Front, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, insisted that Inkatha had “hit squads” trained in the Caprivi Strip. These “hit squads”, which could supposedly take on the thousands of highly trained and equipped guerrilla operatives of the ANC, were in reality 200 men who had been sent for training as VIP security to protect the ministers and infrastructure of the KwaZulu government.

As chief minister I received continuous intelligence reports of planned attacks against my cabinet, which KwaZulu’s small police force was ill-equipped to prevent. I therefore reported these threats to the national government, and my secretary of administration was asked to send 200 men for training as protectors.

Years later, in 1996, the idea of “hit squads” was tested in a criminal trial against former defence minister Gen Magnus Malan and my secretary of administration. That 18-month trial ended in acquittal by the Durban Supreme Court, which, in its own words, could find “no convincing evidence ... that the Caprivi training had intended to equip Inkatha to carry out unlawful killings”.

Inkatha’s “hit squads” were another successful invention of the propaganda machine. Tragically, that propaganda still hides the truth of the past.

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, MP President emeritus, IFP