Dare Not Linger
Page 23
‘I have enormous respect for Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Minister of Home Affairs, in particular, a formidable survivor, who defeated us in two free and fair general elections, firstly in April 1994 and again in June 1999. We used as ammunition against him, facts which are of common knowledge, that he was a Bantustan leader, that although he refused to take independence as other Bantustans had done, he worked hand in hand with the apartheid regime, that they gave him funds to oppose sanctions and the armed struggle, that he formed the trade union UWUSA [United Workers Union of South Africa] to undermine the progressive and dynamic policies of COSATU and the SACP. We even had more damaging allegations than those set out above. All these failed to tarnish his reputation, and he remains to the present day a powerful public figure that cannot be ignored.
‘But few will deny that there is still a hard, arrogant core of influential traditionalists who think that they are superior to other African groups in the country. At a meeting with amaZulu traditional leaders in Durban, Prince Gideon Zulu accused me of having insulted amaZulu in general and their King Zwelithini in particular, when I put him on the same level as King Mayishe II of amaNdebele. I sharply criticised such an arrogant approach and bluntly told him that there were many monarchs that were highly respected in our country. AmaNdebele, I pointed out, were a proud and fearless tribe that had made an important contribution in our history. I added that it was a dangerous delusion on the part of amaZulu to think there was only one black King in the country.
‘There is a disputed area in the Transkei which is claimed by both Thandizulu Sigcau, King of Eastern Pondoland, and by Zwelithini. The two Kings, Minister Buthelezi and myself attended a meeting in that area. I was shocked and embarrassed when Thandizulu was sidelined and told to sit behind Zwelithini and Buthelezi. In spite of my enormous respect for Zwelithini, I could not keep quiet. I intervened and made sure that Thandizulu sat next to Zwelithini in the front seats.
‘There are many members of this famous tribe who are like Deputy President Jacob Zuma and Dr Ben Ngubane of the Inkatha Freedom Party and Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. These two politicians are a shining example of leaders who consistently put the welfare of the country above personal or party interests. They are broad-minded and are committed to the unity of our people.’16
Even though Mandela and Buthelezi had a political and social history – both were former students of the University of Fort Hare and had a shared affiliation to the ANC Youth League – Buthelezi still presented Mandela with a conundrum. Attitudes among the ANC members on the ground, who bore the brunt of the violence in Natal, were hardening with regard to the IFP, with Buthelezi the focal point of their execration. The hostile reaction to Mandela’s plea that the warring factions of Natal throw their pangas ‘into the sea’ did not lessen when, a few weeks later, he broached the idea of meeting with Buthelezi in an effort to bring peace.17
‘The National Executive of the ANC had no objection to me talking to Buthelezi,’ he told Richard Stengel, his collaborator on Long Walk to Freedom. ‘What happened was that in 1990, I went to Pietermaritzburg and I was received enthusiastically. It was difficult – at one time, you know, my shoe came out you see – because there was no proper marshalling and people just crowded around, you know and so on … but they were very enthusiastic. I found it difficult even to start my speech, but when I started my speech, in the course of my speech I said, “Mr De Klerk and Mr Buthelezi and I will have to go to the trouble areas and appeal to the people for peace.” It was then that people wanted to choke me. The same people who had showed me the love. Once I mentioned the name of Buthelezi, they wouldn’t have that. And they said, “You are not going to speak to a man whose organisation has been murdering our people.”’18
Mandela maintained cordial, some will even say friendly, relations with Buthelezi on the basis that the latter had turned down the blandishments of apartheid self-rule in the Bantustans and kept the prisoner ‘informed of what was happening outside’. Many in the ANC didn’t, however, including the leadership in exile, like National Executive Committee member John Nkadimeng, who pronounced on a Radio Freedom broadcast that ‘the puppet Gatsha [Buthelezi] is being groomed by the West and the racist regime to become a [Jonas] Savimbi, in a future free South Africa.* The onus is on the people of South Africa to neutralise the Gatsha snake, which is poisoning the people of South Africa. It needs to be hit over the head.’19
In his book Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda, Mzala, the nom de plume of the late Jabulani Nobleman Nxumalo, a brilliant ideologue of both the ANC and the SACP, refutes any notion that Buthelezi was ever a positive influence in the long struggle against apartheid. He cites him as missing in action for all the momentous events: opposition to the enactment of the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, mobilisation during the Defiance Campaign of 1952, and preparatory action towards the Congress of the People and the adoption of the Freedom Charter. ‘This campaign involved not only people who were ANC members. People from all walks of life participated in it and sent delegates to Kliptown on 26 June 1955. Buthelezi was neither a delegate nor did he send a delegate.’20
Mandela himself explained to Stengel that Buthelezi ‘did not honour arrangements which were made between Inkatha and the ANC … [and] our people got annoyed with him. You see, Inkatha was started by the ANC to work as a legal arm of the ANC inside the country and there was an agreement to that effect.’ But, Mandela states, ‘once Inkatha was now established, Buthelezi decided … to break away from the ANC and to develop it as his own political organisation, and that soured relations.’21
As part of its strategy to stem the violence in KwaZulu-Natal, the government developed an approach to the conflict where peace was to be the dominant theme of politics; traditional leaders were to be extracted from party political control and security action was to be informed by information gathering and undercover work. Mandela stated that the ANC had been ‘unequivocal in its belief that a hidden hand is behind this violence’.22 He also believed that top leadership should be deployed ‘in these dangerous areas’, with adequate security measures being taken. ‘Nothing,’ Mandela felt, ‘discourages people on the ground more than the continued absence of the top leadership in these problematic areas.’23
Just as Mandela had sought the support of P. W. Botha to counter the threat of violence by the Afrikaner right wing, he now called on King Goodwill Zwelithini. ‘My goal,’ Mandela said, ‘was to forge an independent relationship with the king, separate from my relationship with Chief Buthelezi. The king was the true hereditary leader of the Zulus, who loved and respected him. Fidelity to the king was far more widespread in KwaZulu than allegiance to Inkatha.’24
In making this approach, he wasn’t surrendering anything; he would bend over backwards to bring about peace. Walter Sisulu had described his comrade and protégé as a very tough person, adding, ‘I think there are very few people who’ve got the qualities of Nelson. Nelson is a fighter; Nelson is a peacemaker.’25
King Zwelithini gradually came to accept that, as king of a nation of people who belonged to different political parties, he was the only traditional leader who transcended party political disputes.
The continuing violence and inflammatory talk evoked an angry reaction from Mandela. It all began in 1995 on a May Day rally in Umlazi, a sprawling township some 25 kilometres to the south-east of Durban. The rally was held a week after Buthelezi had called on his supporters, in an address at the same stadium, to ‘rise and resist the central government’ if the IFP’s constitutional demands were not met.26 As the police used rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the residents that had massed since morning and to prevent IFP supporters from marching to the rally, an undeterred Mandela continued talking. An article in the Mail & Guardian described how ‘as more shots sent his supporters ducking behind rows of buses outside, Mandela departed from his speech to let loose perhaps the most militant remark of his presidency: “[Inkatha] should know it is [central governme
nt] who is giving them money and they are using the money against my government … should they continue, I’m going to withdraw the money.”’27
Caught by surprise, the president’s office quickly briefed the media, contextualising Mandela’s threat as a ‘timely warning’ to the province.28 Had it been left unexplained, it would have been unconstitutional. Later, in Parliament, Mandela elaborated, aware of the political firestorm his remarks had loosed.
The reduction of tensions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal was, he said, ‘one of the most urgent priorities faced by politicians’. Referring to the Constitution, he reminded MPs and senators that human life was more important than the Constitution – and he would step in and protect human lives, for that was what was at stake.29
‘I have briefed the leaders of political parties inside and outside the Government of National Unity, that there is a serious situation in KwaZulu-Natal. Chief Buthelezi has made a public call to Zulus to rise against the central Government. He has said that if they do not get the right to self-determination, it is not worth being alive. Not only has he made this statement, but [also] this threat is now being implemented in that province.’30
Citing a long list of violations by the IFP, where lives had been lost, he lashed members of the opposition for their hypocrisy on human rights. He said:
‘Members here who have never known about the tradition of human rights and of democracy are now giving gratuitous advice to those people who fought hard to bring about democracy and the culture of human rights in this country. They are talking about the sanctity of the Constitution, and yet, when they were in power, at the slightest excuse, they interfered with the Constitution. They even amended the entrenched process which protected the language rights of people in this country, and took away one of the most important rights of people, the right of the coloured people to vote in this country. Now they are lecturing us on the sanctity of the Constitution.’31
In full flight, but weary, Mandela ended his address, explaining what had motivated him to threaten withdrawing funding from KwaZulu-Natal:
‘I agree that the Constitution is very important, and it is a matter of serious concern when the President of a country threatens to change the Constitution, but I am determined to protect human life. The perception that whites in this country do not care about black lives is there. I may not share it but it is there. The discussions here, where reference is not even made to the principal reason for my having taken this tough line to protect human lives, unfortunately goes a long way in confirming that perception.’32
The issue was again raised when the Senate debated the president’s budget a month later, this time along with a question about the pre-election shooting of IFP demonstrators outside ANC headquarters at Shell House in Johannesburg. Here, Mandela reminded the House of the role of the National Party in using the IFP as its cat’s paw:
‘Whatever the origins of the IFP were, the National Party soon took them over and used them in order to undermine democracy in this country, to undermine the United Democratic Front and now the ANC. Members must remember that when the then President Mr De Klerk was asked in July 1991 whether he had given the IFP R8 million plus R250,000, he said that they had, but that he had stopped it.
‘What is happening in KwaZulu-Natal is part of the agenda of the NP. One can see it, even now, from the way in which they themselves are handling the matter [in the debate]. I am sure they are quite honest about the views that they are expressing, but they are so used to managing the IFP, that it can do no wrong … It is not accurate to project the problem as a clash between the ANC and the IFP only. The NP is amongst the guilty parties in this whole affair, because they have over decades incited the IFP to do certain things which are not consistent with the law of the country. That is why they find it difficult to break away from the wrongs that the IFP are doing.
‘I have been holding discussions with the IFP ever since I came out of prison. For every other meeting we held, the initiative was taken by myself. Not once has the IFP taken that initiative. However, all the other initiatives were taken by the ANC. We have had discussions as organisations. I have called Chief Buthelezi, and had one-on-one discussions with him. All of them failed to resolve anything, but all the NP can say here is that I should hold discussions with Buthelezi.
‘Why should I repeat today what I have been doing for the past five years, which has failed to resolve anything? Are they so barren that they have no fresh suggestions to make, except for saying that I should repeat what I have been doing for the past five years? That is what they are saying! If not, they should tell me what I should do. I have used negotiations, persuasion, but there has been no development at all. What should I do now?’33
A few days later, as if in answer to Mandela’s exasperated question, the cabinet was briefed on the tangible steps being taken to combat the violence in KwaZulu-Natal. A working group consisting of the president, the two deputy presidents and the minister of home affairs was established, marking a shift of emphasis from combative public dispute to concerted security action for stability. Intelligence officers and detectives would accompany additional troops and police deployed in the province. A community safety plan that covered the whole country focused on identified flashpoints, and the Investigation Task Unit continued with its work to identify covert structures of the hit squads.34
An intelligence breakthrough had exposed the ‘hidden hand’ or ‘third force’ involvement, and led, in 1992, to the conviction of police officers responsible for a 1988 massacre in the Natal village of Trust Feed.* Painstaking detective work revealed the extent to which people at the top of the security establishment of central government and the homelands were implicated.35
The exposure of senior political figures created dilemmas, such as the moment in September when the attorney general of the province found himself facing the prospect of prosecuting senior IFP and KwaZulu police officials. In certain instances, placing the peace dividend above the dubious benefit of prosecuting highly placed IFP criminals, the ANC opted for stability. Progress in dealing with violence that had been cultivated over decades was gradual. Violent incidents continued and massacres still happened.
Mandela had to maintain law and order in a flawed, dangerous and irredeemably cruel country, which had spawned monsters like Sifiso Nkabinde, a KwaZulu warlord whose reign of terror only ended in 1999, when he was shot dead in front of his family. Ironically, sometime earlier, while on a killing spree, Nkabinde, a serial defector who had been an ANC leader before going rogue, had unsuccessfully tried to have his own mother murdered. His death was the moment that marked the defanging of the violent progeny of the security structures.
In November 1996, halfway through the government’s five-year term, Mandela was able to report to the ANC’s NEC on the long journey towards an imperfect peace. His notes reflect his optimism:
‘KwaZulu-Natal as a major achievement, among the reasons being firmness, intelligence-driven operations, and the role of political, religious and other leaders. An indication of the success achieved can be gauged from the fact that only 27 cases of violence of a political nature have been recorded in the past 3 months.’36
* * *
Although violence had not been eradicated by the time of the second national elections in 1999, the situation was much better than it had been five years earlier. The no-go areas, which had sometimes proved fatal for election campaigners, had been reduced. King Zwelithini and a few other traditional leaders in KwaZulu-Natal promoted participation and preached tolerance. But as elsewhere in the country, tensions remained, and the province still had one of the largest concentrations of rural poverty in South Africa. The alignment of traditional leadership with democracy had only just begun – and there was still a lot of work to do. The period of transition had left the Zulu king with exceptional status and powers, both of which would prove problematic in years to come.
CHAPTER NINE
Transformation of the State
On 12 June 1964, one of the darkest moments in the history of South Africa, Nelson Mandela and seven other members of MK started a new life as men condemned to life imprisonment. Even though he made light of that time later, quipping that he had ‘gone for a long holiday for twenty-seven years’, before he had even left the Palace of Justice in Pretoria the forty-five-year-old Mandela had already decided that he would not be broken by imprisonment. Surviving prison called for immense reserves of mental strength – he had to arm himself with those things that enhanced his inner stability and discard everything that might weaken him. As there were no elders in prison, Mandela had to depend on the books that had sustained him, and internalise what he had read about the lives of others in similar positions.1
Nelson Mandela’s library, before, during and after incarceration, was full of memoirs and biographies as well as epic novels whose connective tissue is the human struggle and triumph against insurmountable odds. Jan Smuts, Deneys Reitz, V. I. Lenin, Jawaharlal Nehru, Carl von Clausewitz, Kwame Nkrumah and Chief Albert Luthuli sat alongside Spartacus, War and Peace, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee or Red Star Over China.2 Here, too, was the work of Luis Taruc, the Filipino leader of the Hukbalahap guerrillas, whose memoir, Born of the People, was a key text for Mandela when he led MK; Taruc’s account of peasant resistance and guerrilla warfare is so bleak as to be Sisyphean.3
One of the mountains Mandela had to climb was the transformation of the state. As in 1947 when Nehru’s joy at becoming India’s first prime minister was eclipsed by his distress at the wave of sectarian killings and conflict over Kashmir, Mandela – a midwife to an imperfect birth – had to put on a stoic face at the destruction wrought by apartheid, and work to enthuse a dispirited populace. It was here, also, that Mandela would take a leaf out of Nehru’s book when it came to the Indian leader’s trust in the involvement of multilateral organisations, like the UN, toward conflict resolution.