The Buthelezi enigma
There is a haunting South African dirge that has been on my mind this past week, SENZENI NA.
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When I arrived in South Africa early 1993 as correspondent for the BBC Africa Service, much of the coverage of what was happening in the country revolved around the death and funerals of people killed in the violence that had gripped the country.
Black on Black violence, it was being called.
At the wake-keepings, at the funeral marches, you heard SENZENI NA, sung in the most bone-chilling evocative manner and you did not need to know what the words meant to get the pathos of the moment.
SENZENI NA was a Zulu protest and funeral song, the word means “what have we done?”
And you were expected to understand the implication to be “what did we do to deserve this?”
All week, this song has been in my head as South Africa was mourning the death of Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi and he was given a state burial, presided over by President Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC and two previous presidents, also from the ANC, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma sat among the guests at the stadium in Ulundi in Kwazulu, Natal.
My brain was obviously stuck at the beginning of my Chief Buthelezi story and that is why SENZENI NA was so much on my mind.
Chief Buthelezi
I first went to South Africa on a reporting trip in 1989 and later went to live there in 1993, and the name Chief Buthelezi was already very well known to me by reputation.
He was against the imposition of sanctions on apartheid South Africa.
This was the black South African leader who was a welcome guest in the Ronald Reagan White House and was feted by Margaret Thatcher, while Nelson Mandela languished in jail on Robben Island.
On reflection, I did not give myself any other option of seeing this man other than as an apartheid collaborator.
Whereas I knew many ANC people and had them as friends, until I got to South Africa, I did not know any Inkatha Freedom Party person and I could not get their story from personal sources.
I was once told by a group of young white South Africans that they believed Chief Buthelezi was the person that could save South Africa from the inevitable civil war.
This was the remarkable day I spent in Bloemfontein at the University of Orange Free State, as it was then called, where the student population was at the time, more than 90 per cent Afrikaner.
I interviewed some of the young Afrikaner students who told me Chief Buthelezi was the only black South African they could ever bring themselves to vote for, “if it should ever come to that”.
This was in 1991 and nobody knew at the time if things would ever get to the point of a free peaceful vote taking place in the country.
But in 1993 South Africa, there was no room really to hang around looking to understand things from personal perspectives.
We were busy dodging bullets and bombs.
The ANC-INKATHA feud was in full flow and deaths and funerals were the daily fare for journalists.
I was told by friendly colleague journalists that it was not a good idea to get on the wrong side of Chief Buthelezi, the Inkatha leader.
Trouble
Now on reflection, the first trouble I got into was about something quite ludicrous, but at the time, it was deadly serious.
You got into trouble as a journalist with the ANC if you covered an Inkatha rally and reported the size of the crowd at the rally as large.
In much the same way, you got into trouble with Inkatha if you reported an ANC crowd as large.
We journalists used to ask the police to give us a figure of the crowds as they were supposed to know how to estimate crowds.
I reported on an Inkatha rally, using figures I got from the police, but it turned out Chief Buthelezi felt I had underestimated the size of his “massive” crowd.
I got a message he was not happy with me.
Then there was the little matter of asking him to explain a statement that had been put out by Inkatha and telling him I wanted to hear it from “the horses own mouth”.
As I said last week, when he asked me if he looked like a horse, I panicked because I couldn’t see the smile that would accompany the obvious joke he was making.
There was no smile, but as I found out later, his bark was worse than his bite.
Unfortunately, his followers took his word as law.
Argument
I once had an argument with him about the leopard skin he wore and spear that he carried that was supposed to be the Zulu traditional wear.
I suggested to him that all humans, every tribe, every nation on earth had at one time worn animal skins and carried spears and the Zulus could not claim that as their traditional attire.
Judging from his reputation, I shouldn’t really have emerged in one piece after such an impertinent remark.
But he didn’t even frown.
That was Chief Buthelezi.
Who would have thought that this royal Zulu would have just one wife, that he married in 1952, Princess Irene Audrey Thandekile Mzila, and stayed married to her until she died in 2019, four years before his own demise.
And in the last 30 years, even with his politics, it was hard to see the hardline Zulu nationalist and foe of the ANC.
After refusing to be part of the negotiations that ended apartheid and insisting Inkatha would not participate in the historic elections of April 1994 and threatening mayhem, he simply announced days to the election that he would take part.
Exactly what he had been holding out for and for which so much blood was spilled, and which he got at that 11th hour, I couldn’t tell.
Drama
It is impossible to convey now the sheer drama of that announcement by Chief Buthelezi that Inkatha would take part in the elections.
All the journalists from around the world that had arrived to cover the elections knew they were coming to cover a full-scale civil war and we all had bullet-proof vests.
The ballot papers had already been printed and the sample ones had been given out and were being used to teach the black population who had never voted before and with days to the vote, Chief Buthelezi changed the atmosphere completely as he was put on the bottom of the ballot.
The surprise didn’t end with his participation in the elections, he became Home Affairs Minister for 10 years in the Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki administrations.
As Home Affairs Minister, it meant that Chief Buthelezi got to be acting president many times in an ANC administration whenever the president and vice president were out of the country.
I kept wondering about all those many, many people who got killed because Inkatha and ANC couldn’t share the same space. SENZENI NA.
