Part of the apartheid system was the policy of setting up tribal homelands known as Bantustans, supposedly independent black states; and in March 1972 the South African government established a self-governing territory called KwaZulu, which consisted of 44 separate blocks of land north and south of the Tugela. Its chief minister was Buthelezi, a staunch Zulu nationalist who had portrayed his great-grandfather Cetshwayo in the epic 1964 film Zulu, starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. For years he had been an outspoken critic of apartheid both at home and abroad. He was now to remain a thorn in the South African government’s side. For example, he refused to accept the fiction that KwaZulu was really independent and openly called for the release of Mandela and other imprisoned black leaders.
In March 1975, moreover, Buthelezi set up Inkatha (a revival of a defunct movement first established in the 1920s) to serve as ‘an instrument of liberation’, albeit one eschewing armed confrontation with the South African security forces. As Buthelezi was to comment in March 1992: ‘In our history, Zulus went to war for spoils. It was very clear to us that any war with the South African Defence Force [the most potent military machine in Africa] would be a war without spoils, just ashes.’
In June 1976, violence erupted in the vast black township of Soweto near Johannesburg, South Africa’s greatest city, and spread elsewhere, only to be crushed by the government. History repeated itself on a greater scale in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, in August 1990, with the South African economy badly hit by sanctions imposed some years earlier by the international community to bring an end to apartheid, South Africa’s moderate new president, F.W. de Klerk, released Mandela and unbanned organisations such as the ANC.
By this date, Buthelezi was finding himself increasingly marginalised. He had, indeed, been denounced as a stooge of the South African government by more militant nationalists who viewed him and Inkatha (whose membership was almost entirely Zulu) with hostility and contempt. This acrimonious state of affairs had prevailed ever since members of the ANC’s leadership in exile had decided to undermine him a decade earlier.
Violence between supporters of Inkatha and more radical blacks, both in Natal and elsewhere, had been occurring for a number of years. North of the Tugela, in the Zulu heartland, Buthelezi was supreme. But in the urban areas around Durban and Pietermaritzburg he had lost ground to the UDF (United Democratic Front), a surrogate for the then banned ANC. Heightened bloodshed occurred following Mandela’s release, and in the years 1990-4 nearly 10,000 people were killed in KwaZulu-Natal alone as Inkatha and suppporters of the ANC fought for supremacy, and in many cases Zulu killed Zulu.
Bloodshed also occurred on the Witwatersrand, to which Zulu males had gone to work and where they lived in hostels in townships such as Soweto. A clash between Zulu migrant workers and local militants had occurred in Soweto during the disturbances of 1976, but 1990 witnessed the start of more serious conflict in the black townships of the region. In June 1992, for instance, marauding Zulu hostel dwellers killed 42 residents of Biopatong, and the world’s television networks portrayed street battles waged between the two factions. One such happened in the heart of Johannesburg itself in early 1994.
Then, in late April of that year, following protracted constitutional talks between the government and other parties, most notably the ANC, South Africans of all races went to the polls. Nationally, Nelson Mandela and the ANC swept to power. In KwaZulu-Natal, however, it was Inkatha that topped the polls, gaining 50.3 per cent of the vote. Even allowing for electoral malpractice (of which the ANC was likewise guilty) Inkatha clearly enjoyed a higher degree of support in the province than many had anticipated. Hence it was to be the dominant party in the KwaZulu-Natal regional assembly. On the other hand, it only gained 43 seats in the national parliament, in contrast to the 82 of the National Party (which obtained significant non-white support) and the 252 of the ANC. During the election period, violence ceased in KwaZulu-Natal but it sadly continued thereafter, with supporters of Inkatha and the ANC once again adding to the death toll.
And what of the Zulu monarchy? It still exists, despite various vicissitudes over the years, and ‘the institution, role, authority and status’ of the Zulu monarch in KwaZulu-Natal is enshrined in South Africa’s new constitution. The current king is Goodwill Zwelithini, a great-grandson of Dinazulu and a nephew of Buthelezi, who began to emerge from under his uncle’s shadow in the period leading up to the 1994 elections. There is still a strong sense of Zulu nationhood in South Africa and the king enjoys the adulation and deep respect of a considerable percentage of the Zulu people.
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