Big Men Little People

by Alec Russell

  After a clumsy attempt at social engineering in many parts of Africa, notably Mozambique, there is a tacit recognition that the attempt by independence governments to abolish chiefs was too doctrinaire, and they have been reallocated carefully defined roles. In Uganda King Ronnie of Buganda has restored the monarchy of his father, the late King Freddy, who was forced into exile in 1966 after a vicious assault on his palace led by Idi Amin, the then army commander. After studying at Cambridge, where he did not finish his degree, and a stint as a double-glazing salesman, the Kabaka, as the king is known, argues he can work with the government to contribute to Uganda's development. He has only ceremonial powers but believes the institution can help to blend tradition with modernity.

  The challenge is to work out how to keep traditional leaders in check. In Zululand the struggle is particularly intense.

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  South Africa's traditional leaders weathered the twentieth century's vicissitudes better than their peers north of the Limpopo. Settlers and colonists had always had a soft spot for chiefs and so white rule cushioned them from the storms to the north. The Afrikaner Nationalists saw them as integral to their warped social and ethnic vision and gave them greater powers than they had enjoyed under the previous more liberal governments. This reached a climax in the Seventies when they were promoted as leaders of ten tribal homelands as part of the 'Grand Apartheid' vision of separating tribes.

  Their authority crumbled, however, in the Eighties as the white minority government spluttered to a close. Discredited by their associations with apartheid, they were seen as legitimate targets by the youths who were pushing for change under the banner of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the surrogate for the ANC, which had been banned and in exile since the early Sixties. The social revolution if anything gathered momentum after the ANC was unbanned in 1990. Chiefs were criticized as autocratic and outdated. Most in the ANC were adamant: the chiefs had to go.

  Heading the ANC's hate list was Chief Buthelezi, the chief minister of KwaZulu, one of the ten homelands, a patchwork quilt of land which included most of the old Zulu kingdom but not, of course, the richest farmland in the region which had been reserved for the whites. He had led KwaZulu from its foundation in 1970 and had stubbornly resisted the white government's pressure to accept a nominal independence, correctly arguing it was a sham, which merely served whites' needs.

  When KwaZulu was founded, the Zulu chiefs were a shadow of their historical selves. While nominally imbued with the traditional authority granted to them by the British a century earlier, they were formulaic placemen who could be appointed and dismissed by the white government in Pretoria. Their glory days of the last century, which had culminated, with their destruction of Lord Chelmsford's central column at Isandhlwana were a hazy memory to be replayed over pots of sorghum beer. The British refused all peace overtures in their determination to avenge the shame of their defeat, and crushed the Zulus at Ulundi and sent Cetshwayo into exile, plunging the royal house into a Macbethian saga of ambition and betrayal which sparked far bloodier battles than Isandhlwana. The sorry tale reached its denouement in 1906 when a minor chief, Bambatha, led a short-lived rebellion against a poll tax. He and more than 2,000 followers were killed. The humiliation of the Zulu chiefs was complete. Since then youths have been drifting from the valleys to the big towns in search of work in ever increasing numbers, an agonizing exodus powerfully portrayed in Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.

  Buthelezi changed all that, converting the chiefs from an apathetic bunch of greybeards to a potent political force to further his quest to control the levers of power in the province. The KwaZulu government provided the key to the chiefs' loyalties as it controlled the purse-strings and allocated their stipends and perks. Zulu nationalism provided the glue. As the ANC's feud with Buthelezi intensified in the early Eighties so the chiefs were sucked into politics and ultimately a low-level civil war.

  At least 15,000 people were killed from the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties in fighting between supporters of Inkatha and the ANC before a peace accord in 1996. The conflict was dubbed 'low-intensity' but it seemed intense enough in the valleys of Zululand and in the burgeoning squatter settlements outside Durban and Pietermaritzburg, the region's two main cities, where membership of the 'wrong' party could be a death sentence, and where thousands of Zulus had to flee their homes.

  Latterly the conflict became a turf war for votes: KwaZulu was the one densely populated black area in South Africa outside ANC control. The fighting was also crudely primed by a 'Third Force' of apartheid security forces who backed Inkatha to sow confusion and undermine the ANC during the transition from white rule. The bloodiest clashes were in the townships around Johannesburg where it spread in 1990 as Buthelezi sought to make Inkatha a national political force. But politics was not the only contention; this was also a clash between two very different worlds. The political feud between the ANC and Inkatha fuelled a conflict of cultures between city-slickers and country bumpkins, or as often reignited an ancestral feud over cattle, women or land, the three burgeoning issues for a red blooded traditional Zulu male.

  The chiefs of KwaZulu were the old order coming up against the new. It was inevitable that most of them backed Buthelezi. Not only did he control their purse strings in Ulundi, the centre of the KwaZulu homeland government, which paid the chiefs' stipends, he was also a champion of tradition against the modernizers of the ANC with their calls for social reform and downgrading chiefs. Further, Inkatha touted itself as a force of stability standing for education and the status quo when the ANC was calling for boycotting schools.

  In the early days of the civil war Buthelezi won sympathy in international conservative circles. He was seen as holding the dyke against the more radical message of the ANC, the like of which had proved so destructive to rural Africa further north. But by the late Eighties opinion was shifting as KwaZulu had become little more than Buthelezi's fief. Touring the valleys he stoked the fires of Zulu nationalism with long impassioned speeches invoking the glorious past and calling for a return of the old Zulu kingdom. It was a dangerous game, which threatened the very fabric of the state. It was also an object lesson in the potential absolutism of traditional chiefly power.

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  When a party of early white settlers travelled to see Shaka in 1824 to pay their respects, they were disconcerted to find he knew of their every move. Henry Francis Fynn, the party chronicler, recorded that messengers intercepted them every few hours on their journey to report on their progress from Port Natal, as Durban was then known.2 During their stay, the Zulu Napoleon left little doubt he had installed the late nineteenth-century equivalent of an elaborate bugging system. Fynn was quizzed by Shaka personally after he made an un scheduled visit to a distant part of the kingdom. One hundred and seventy years later, as I travelled from Johannesburg to Ulundi for an audience with Buthelezi, it was as if little had changed.

  In the best 'Big Man' tradition the visitor entering Ulundi is under no illusions as to who is in charge. Leaving the Mangosuthu Buthelezi Airport on my right, I drove along the Buthelezi

  Highway and checked in at the Holiday Inn, reputedly the smallest in the world. Bypassing the Buthelezi conference rooms I bumped into the maid who had just finished cleaning my room. By now it came as no surprise to find she was called Precious Buthelezi. When I mentioned my host's name in the bar the other occupants looked into their drinks and froze. There was no need to ask for directions to the KwaZulu legislative assembly where the interview was to take place. In the old days Ulundi was a collection of huts and cattle pens clustered around the royal enclosure. Only the building materials have changed. Instead of the cattle kraals there is a tiny shopping centre and garage. Instead of the royal homestead there is a totalitarian complex which houses the KwaZulu assembly.

  South Africa's first ever non-racial democratic constitution had just been approved. The elections, which would end white rule, were set for six months hence. On paper South Afr
ica was well set to bid farewell to its tortured past. There was however one major problem: the chief was unhappy with the way things were going.

  I had come to ask him why as head of Inkatha, the country's second largest black party, and as the 'third man' in South Africa after Nelson Mandela and the then president F.W. De Klerk, he was opposed to the poll. As I waited in his ante chamber a convincing answer was to be found on the coffee tables and walls, which were adorned with the photographs of Western leaders shaking his hand.

  Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, Kohl, the collection would have been the envy of many a head of state. They were a testimony to Buthelezi's record in the Eighties when he had been the darling of the West. As a free-marketeer opposed to the 'armed struggle' and sanctions, he was the black opposition leader the West could and did support. In his youth he had been a member of the ANC Youth League. His forthright anti-apartheid stance had led to his expulsion from Fort Hare University, the cradle of black nationalism whose alumni included Mandela and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He accepted the chief ministership of KwaZulu in the early Seventies only after consultation with the ANC. Thereafter he was lionized by many blacks for his dogged defiance of the hard men of the National Party, and for his insistence that there could be no negotiations about the end of white rule until Mandela was released. It was not just his courtiers who whispered in the Eighties that he was in the running as a possible compromise first black president. Even the Broederbond was believed to be considering him in that light.

  But those days were long gone as I waited for my summons. Buthelezi fell out with the ANC in 1979 when they accused him of turning KwaZulu into a personal power base. The West continued to back him as a black counterweight to the then Soviet-backed ANC. He maintained support in white liberal and business circles because of his opposition to the 'armed struggle' and his repudiation of calls by ANC radicals to boycott schools. But as relations continued to worsen between him and the ANC in the late Eighties so his principles appeared to become subsumed by a lust for power.

  His nadir came in 1991 when he was forced to admit that an apartheid slush fund had financed two Inkatha rallies and a pro Inkatha union movement. In the wake of disclosures that the white government had trained Inkatha hit-squads - which he always insisted were bodyguard units - his credibility crumbled outside the valleys of Zululand among all but a few conservative and Zuluphile businessmen. Although his constitutional stance remained an important check on the ANC, his judgement and principles faltered, to the ill-considered glee of his opponents, many of whom had no interest in allaying the chief's concerns and instead were set on crushing him, whatever the cost to South African stability. Friendless, he ended up forging an alliance with white right-wingers, the very people he had campaigned so long and hard against. The doors of the world's statesmen closed. Far from shaping up as a potential national leader, he was regarded even by many of his old allies in white business and foreign embassies as at best a nuisance and at worst a threat to South Africa's stability. He was regularly denounced in the South African media as the spoiler. Looking at his photograph collection I had no difficulty making a glib psycho analysis. This was a man whose pride had been badly tweaked. He had lost the race. He was at bay.

  An aide ushered me into the cabinet room. Circular and devoid of windows, it reminded me curiously of politburos in the old Eastern bloc. My ensuing encounter was unsatisfactory inasmuch as I came no closer to understanding Inkatha's strategy. But I did gain an insight into the chief's dual ethos. He was in Western politician mode, in an immaculate dark grey suit, and talking the language of constitutions and liberal democracy. He seemed, in the jargon of consultants, a micro-manager. He gave the impression of having perused every paragraph of every paper that had passed his desk. Every question elicited a reply based on such and such a sub-clause in such and such a document.

  And yet in the best chiefly traditions form was all important. Every greeting, every slight over the years had been logged. He recalled with obvious bitterness Mandela's failure to take up his invitation to meet soon after his release from Robben Island when regional ANC diehards dissuaded him from the idea, arguing that to meet Buthelezi would serve no purpose beyond boosting the chief's image.

  Buthelezi is a pastmaster at using protocol as a pretext for obstruction. He boycotted the first set of constitutional talks after the unbanning of the ANC on the grounds that King Goodwill, who was then effectively his pawn, was not allowed a separate delegation - a manoeuvre that would have given the chief increased voting powers. But it would be wrong to dismiss his traditional hankerings as a political gimmick. He, and indeed Ulundi, had a foot in two worlds. KwaZulu was an administrative and financial centre for a large chunk of Africa's most developed state. It was also the nerve centre of Zulu politics, whose feudal complexities had changed little since the last century. Buthelezi as much as anyone personified the apparent contradiction. As we discussed his difficulties with the constitution, I could have been sitting in Brussels or Bonn. But the next time I saw him addressing a rally of rural Zulus and headmen, clad in leopard skins, wielding a sceptre and delivering a fiery two-hour historical speech, he was every inch the African chief.

  His opponents mocked his chiefly credentials and trappings. Inkatha rallies did sometimes smack of pantomime. I was sitting in a Soweto stadium as thousands of bare-chested young Zulus bounded into the centre waving ox-hide shields and spears. At their head was an induna in full leopard-skin regalia. With the muscles on his arms and calves rippling and gleaming in the sun he cut a magnificent figure. Then he suddenly checked himself and lifted up a flap in his loincloth to reveal a pager tucked into a black leotard. It was a reminder of the play-acting that underpinned the glorification of the old Zulu ways, but no one could deny Buthelezi's brilliance at playing - and if necessary playing up to - traditional politics.

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  The chief is not known for sound bites. In 1994 he entered the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest speech after he spoke for an average of two and a half hours on eleven of the eighteen days of a session of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly the previous year. He is also legendary for his pedantic pursuit of a line of thought. So I was startled when he suddenly broke off from a venture into the arcane recesses of South Africa's constitutional history and asked: 'Where is your wife? She must join us for lunch.'

  Sophie, my wife, had indeed driven down with me and had dropped me off at the entrance to the legislative assembly, but I was not aware her presence had been logged by the sentry, let alone that it had reached the ears of my host. I muttered that she had gone sightseeing. The chief summoned an aide, whispered in his hear, and sent him out. Sophie was in the Ulundi museum and had just asked the young Zulu deputy curator a delicate question about political freedom in Zululand when he suddenly fell silent. There was a long shadow in the doorway. It was Buthelezi's aide. 'You are having lunch with the chief in ten minutes' time.'

  The answer to Sophie's question never came. Given the deputy curator's agonized face she wondered, as she was driven to the legislative assembly, if he would have to answer for her candour. The stories of the chief's autocratic style are legendary. He is one of Africa's most prickly politicians and seems to expect unquestioning obedience. Over the years a series of lieutenants who appeared to show too much initiative fell from favour or 'retired'. At a press conference in Cape Town in February 1995 attended by dozens of diplomats he became almost inarticulate with rage when I asked him to justify one of his positions. I was apparently guilty of thinking like a white man and failing to understand the African mind, an argument beloved by African leaders when put on the spot by foreign correspondents. 'It amazes me, the mentality of the Caucasian people ... ' he raged. 'What is necessary in their minds ... what is necessary in our black minds ...'

  And yet the chief also had a dazzle and charm. Not for a moment did he condescend to us over lunch even though we were less than half his age. With the rancour of his political obsessions out
of the way, he was witty and entertaining. It was easy to see how he cut a dash in conservative circles in London, where, for backers like John Aspinall, the British gambling entrepreneur, zoo-keeper and wildlife conservationist, Buthelezi was a link to a nobler, more honourable past. This was a man after all whose ancestors had fought the British in the Zulu war. He even acted in Zulu, the Michael Caine classic film about the defence of the Rorke's Drift mission station by a tiny British garrison against overwhelming odds on the evening after Isandhlwana.

  Ever since those battles, the Zulus have had a heroic and mystical appeal. The stereotype of the noble warrior imbues the international image of the Zulu. In the valleys small boys still play with sticks rather than footballs. The martial tradition is maintained in Johannesburg's township hostels, barrack-like dormitories which are home to tens of thousands of Zulu men. Under apartheid so-called migrant workers were forced to live in hostels as a temporary workforce for the mines in exile from their wives and families. Their conditions were Spartan as was their discipline- and their war talk was not all bluster.

  Shortly before the April 1994 election I watched from a balcony in central Johannesburg as thousands of Zulus went on the rampage in a central square. They were marching to show their opposition to the elections and, after attacking suspected political rivals, were fired on as they marched into town. As the rally descended into chaos two men were shot dead below my perch and another two a hundred yards away on the other side of the square. Yet amid volleys of gunfire many of the young men proudly refused to throw themselves on the ground and continued to prance the classic Zulu war-dance in a display of the spirit which inspired the suicidal charges against the British at Rorke's Drift and which also immortalized the Zulus' cult status in London.