Zulu historical figure Buthelezi dies aged 95

South Africa’s historic Inkatha Party leader and revered Zulu figure Mangosuthu Buthelezi died this Saturday at the age of 95, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced.

“It is with deep sadness that I announce the death of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Prince of Kwa Phindangene, traditional Prime Minister of the King and the Zulu people, founder and honorary president of the Inkatha Freedom Party,” Ramaphosa said in a statement.

Ramaphosa hailed “a formidable leader who played an important role in the history” of South Africa over seven decades.

“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our country, including the ups and downs of our liberation struggle, the transition period that secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic regime,” he stressed.

Magosuthu Buthelezi, who was home affairs minister in democratic South Africa’s transitional government under Nelson Mandela, died early Saturday morning, two weeks after celebrating his 95th birthday.

Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, born into the Zulu royal family in August 1928, for many years embodied the proud and warrior spirit of the country’s largest ethnic group.

At the time of his death, Buthelezi’s party was regaining the popularity it had lost to its rival the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, his home province in the southeast of the country.

Buthelezi founded the Inkatha Freedom Party at the request of Oliver Tambo, then the longtime leader of the African National Congress (ANC), becoming an outspoken critic of the then South African liberation movement.

In April 2021, the founder and honorary president of the Inkatha Freedom Party said in an exclusive interview with Lusa that there had never been a real reconciliation with the party in power in South Africa, which he then said he wanted to reconcile with.

Buthelezi, who began his political career with the African National Congress (ANC), highlighted that Zambia’s then head of state Kenneth Kaunda, during a visit to Lusaka, urged him to create a political organization in South Africa that was “more representative”. black South Africans” in the 1960s and 1970s.

“I later spoke to my leader Oliver Tambo. [o fundador do ANC]who told me, ‘Please move forward,’ and that’s how I created the IFP as a front for the ANC, based on the same principles of non-violence and negotiation since the birth of the ANC in 1912.” – he emphasized.

However, South Africa’s political transition from the racially segregated “apartheid” regime to democracy would be characterized by constitutional demands and escalating violence between the ANC and the IFP, led respectively by Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, in the Natal provinces. (now KwaZulu-Natal) and Transvaal (now Gauteng) negotiate with the white minority government of South Africa.

The IFP, which the Pretoria government recognized as representing the country’s black majority when it legalized the ANC, also threatened to boycott the first multiparty and democratic elections during the negotiation process from 26 to 28 April 1994.

After years of ethnic violence between the ANC and the IFP in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, where Johannesburg is located, the IFP participated in the first democratic elections and was part of the country’s first post-apartheid government.

South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, in which Mangosuthu Buthelezi received 10.5% of the vote, joining the first government of national unity led by President Nelson Mandela, were the result of four years of negotiations that began in 1990 with the legalization of the liberation movements. namely the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), as well as the agreement reached by the then ruling party, the Nationalist Party (NP).

The Zulu leader then explained to Lusa that in 2019 he approached South African President and African National Congress (ANC) leader Cyril Ramaphosa, to whom he expressed regret that the ruling party had been unfair to him, but justified that at the time he could not cede power in the region to the ANC.

Buthelezi said he stressed to the South African head of state that there was a need to “close this wound”, regretting that Covid-19 had interrupted these negotiations because, in his words, “time is ticking”.

“We do not share the vision of the ANC, that is, the fight between us is not over, because I do not think that an agreement will be reached, even on the issue of expropriation of land we have big differences, so the fight continues,” Mangosuthu Buthelezi emphasized. Luse at that time.

After 44 years of leading the party, Buthelezi stepped down as IFP president in 2019, remaining as honorary president.