Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has died aged 95, dedicated himself to acquiring and exploiting power over his Zulu tribe in South Africa to such effect that he became an asset to the Afrikaner nationalist administration of the apartheid state and its divide-and-rule strategy for controlling the majority black population. He was the founder of the Inkatha Freedom party, which was tolerated for a while by the African National Congress as an alliance partner in the fight against apartheid. After a breakdown in their relations in 1979, the IFP was a thorn in the ANC’s side, undermining much of what it was attempting to achieve. In the early 1980s confrontation between supporters of the two factions more and more frequently led to physical violence, injuries and deaths.
Key to Buthelezi’s influence in apartheid South Africa was the policy of the white rulers, laid out by the National party prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd in 1959, of “separate development” areas across the country, to which members of various tribes were ascribed, while denying them basic rights in “white” South Africa. One of these 10 homelands – known as bantustans – was Buthelezi’s KwaZulu, which encompassed about 8 million people, one fifth of the South African population.
