Most of the protagonists of the South African freedom struggle are no longer alive. Mangosuthu “Gatsha” Buthelezi, one of the last personalities of this time, has died. The Zulu chief died on Saturday morning at the age of 95, President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Buthelezi was head of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which he founded in 1975, and later Nelson Mandela’s interior minister. On the one hand, he was long seen as a bearer of hope and a freedom fighter. On the other hand, he was repeatedly criticized by his former allies and later opponents in the African National Congress (ANC) as a stooge of the apartheid government.
Pacifist or profiteer?
Unlike Mandela’s ANC, it rejected armed struggle against the racist white apartheid government and advocated non-violent conflict resolution. Although he called for the release of his companion Mandela, he was also seen as a beneficiary of the white apartheid system.
Buthelezi, who comes from a royal family of the large Zulu people, took over the leadership of the Buthelezi clan in 1953 after studying history before becoming head of government in 1976 for the KwaZulu tribal area in Natal, which was viewed as autonomous by the apartheid government.
The supporters of the ANC, which was then banned in South Africa, excluded the Inkatha when they founded the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983. The conflict between the two groups led to a cruel power struggle with more than 20,000 deaths.
Buthelezi retained his parliamentary mandate well into old age. Only a few years ago the politician gave up the chairmanship of the IFP.