BY
MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP
MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS AND
PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY
Harding: December 11, 2002
It is a great pleasure for me
to become acquainted with one of the world’s best known and most loved
public figures. I think it is a privilege for South Africa that Ms Oprah
Winfrey has chosen to extend her friendship to South Africa and its people.
For a long time I have been a sincere and trusted friend of the United
States and its people, and I have always appreciated American citizens who
become ambassadors of goodwill, creating new ties between the United States
and Africa. Many Americans have built bridges between deeply diverse
American and African worlds. However, I feel that Ms Oprah Winfrey’s
presence amongst us carries a special message which brings immediate
relevance to the dialogue which must unite these two worlds.
Her message of compassion reinforces the notion that we
all belong to a unified mankind. What really matters are the people. As
people we all share the same dreams, tragedies and circumstances, albeit in
different contexts. As people we equally share the indomitable spirit of
mankind which drives us towards never ceasing progress and self-improvement.
There is no doubt that the path confronting many of the African people is
still long, hard and uphill. But in meeting ambassadors of goodwill such as
Oprah Winfrey, we realise that we are not alone in having to confront and
conquer this great challenge.
In over fifty years of engagement in active politics and
as the leader of my people I have witnessed transformation of a magnitude
which seemed almost impossible during the days of my youth. Since my early
youth I embraced a dream of a free and liberated South Africa which I
nourished under the guidance and mentorship of the political giants of the
time. I was fortunate to be mentored by Nobel Laureate Chief Albert Lutuli
and other great leaders such as Dr John Dube and Professor ZK Matthews. In
my youth I fought hard for our liberation struggle, to the point that I was
expelled from Fort Hare University because of my activism in the ANC Youth
League. However, in spite of our activism we really did not know whether
freedom would indeed come in our lifetime, nor could we fully imagine what
it would be like.
I guess many of us thought that once we achieved our
liberation, the struggle would be over. We underestimated the
responsibilities and challenges which come with freedom. I often recall the
discomforting but sombre reflection which PAC leader, Robert Sobukwe,
captured in his famous sentence "Black man, now you are on your
own". Fortunately, I had to confront this tragic truth much sooner than
many of those who were my colleagues and partners in the liberation struggle
during the days of my youth. After I studied law and while practicing as a
young lawyer in Durban, the ANC leaders who were my mentors pointed out that
because of my responsibilities of birth, I had to abandon my chosen
profession to become the leader of my people so that our liberation struggle
could be strengthened by my assuming my hereditary role.
Not all of us can choose our destinies completely. To a
certain extent, I was born into mine. I have never mentioned this, but in
putting pen to paper to leave Ms Oprah Winfrey, a person whom I sincerely
admire, with a memento of our encounter, I felt I could use the opportunity
also to confront a short reflection of my own life. I have rarely done so
before as the rush of the struggle and the tumultuous political events which
I have been involved in as a leader for almost fifty years have rarely
allowed me to look backwards. Only the future mattered and to a great extent
I am still locked in the same paradigm, as I know that my task is far from
being completed and perhaps all that has gone before has been merely in
preparation for that which is still to come.
I was born in a position which was conducive to my
becoming the traditional leader of one of the largest clans of our nation,
the Buthelezi Clan, and on account of such position to serve as the
Traditional Prime Minister of the Zulu Kingdom. My maternal grandfather,
King Solomon, was an extremely wise king who dedicated his reign to unifying
the Zulu nation which had been artificially divided by the British conquest
which interfered with the structure of our kingdom to disintegrate it. In
fact, the British defeated our kingdom but never entirely conquered or
subjugated it. For this reason, King Solomon chose his daughter, Princess
Magogo, to marry my father, who was his Traditional Prime Minister and the
son of Mnyamana Buthelezi who was the Commander-in-Chief of all the Zulu
troops under the reign of my great great grandfather King Cetshwayo. In that
capacity Mnyamana Buthelezi defeated the British army at the Battle of
Isandlwana. Therefore, since my birth the Zulu nation looked to me as the
one who would need to carry the burden of rebuilding its unity and leading
it to its redemption and liberation.
When as a young man I went back to lead my people, I was
confronted with the hard lessons of reality. It is easy to be ideologues and
great political theoreticians when sitting inside universities, or even when
suffering in prisons, or for that matter while being abroad in exile.
However, when confronted with the pressing needs of the poorest of the poor
who look to one for leadership which can feed their families and provide
essential services such as basic education and health care, one cannot but
become a pragmatist. I grew up and lived all my life amongst the poorest of
the poor who are the majority of the people of South Africa. Whatever
decisions I have ever taken in my life, and indeed I had to take many hard
and difficult decisions which have often isolated me and even led to my
vilification, I always asked myself how I could improve on the conditions of
the poor and suffering masses of South Africa. I also constantly sought the
guidance of God Almighty. I have always tried to do what is right,
irrespective of the consequences, as I have always believed, as I still
unwaveringly do, that for as long as I remain true to my conscience and act
on the basis of what I understand to be morally and ethically correct,
divine providence will in the end ensure that through me the work of God may
be realized.
This has not been an easy path and it led me to pay very
high prices. However, I have lived long enough to have the satisfaction of
having seen history prove me right time and time again. In 1975 I formed
Inkatha as a cultural liberation movement to organize and provide a
political home for the large black masses which were orphaned of political
leadership when the ANC was declared illegal. After the death of Chief
Albert Lutuli the new and younger ANC leadership chose the path of armed
insurrection, violence and intimidation as the tools to be employed in our
liberation struggle. Until then, the ANC had ascribed to a philosophy of
passive resistance and nonviolence which was in no small measure inspired by
the Mahatma Gandhi who, during his stay in Durban, was intimately involved
in the events and circumstances which led to the creation of the ANC and the
formulation of its philosophy. I grew up in that tradition and always
remained faithful to it, not merely for ideological and spiritual reasons,
but because as a real leader of real people I knew that one could not play
with history. Only negotiations, negotiations, negotiations could lead to a
liberated South Africa. I was aware that a military victory over the mighty
South African army was impossible.
Inkatha was formed with the blessing and the assistance of
the ANC. However, when in 1979 the ANC chose to upgrade its strategies based
on violence and armed insurrection, it confronted us with a blind
alternative of either being part of the armed struggle or being against it.
I pleaded that we should use a differentiated approach that would enable
each component of the liberation movement to follow its own strategy,
thereby enabling Inkatha to pursue its very effective campaign of
nonviolence, passive resistance and civil disobedience. However, it soon
became clear that the armed struggle was not as much a tool to secure the
demise of apartheid as it became a tool to defeat various competing
components within the liberation movement, and to gain political hegemony
within the liberation movement to prepare for political hegemony after
liberation. Tragedy of unforeseeable proportions befell South Africa as the
armed struggle was turned against other components of the liberation
movement in the so-called black-on-black conflict.
The world, especially the Western world chose to ignore
the tragic reality of the black-on-black conflict because it unsettled its
simplistic and Disney-like understanding of a South Africa divided between a
united majority of righteous black people, fighting against a united
minority of oppressive white people. In fact the conflict was much more
complex. It is surely simplistic to explain and measure conflicts in terms
of casualties, but in this case the figures of the armed struggle speak for
themselves, as they reveal that about 600 white people were victims of the
actions of the armed struggle, while more than 20 000 black people were
killed and hundreds of thousands were dispossessed, injured and forcibly
removed by actions of their black brothers. Yet I do not regret my decision
not to embrace the armed struggle because I know well that it could never
have succeeded, as indeed it failed, and in the end we ended up having to
achieve liberation only through negotiations and merely on the strength of
the high moral ground which we conquered through nonviolent means.
I also knew that had I led the Zulu nation, which is a
nation of warriors, into the armed struggle, South Africa would have been
burned to ashes, with no spoils of victory for anyone. Had the Zulu nation
taken up arms, the figures of casualties of the armed struggle would have
been many times greater. Instead, I preached and practiced a philosophy that
no South African had to be regarded as either a terrorist to be banned, a
foreigner to be expelled or an enemy to be defeated. But we all had to
achieve the freedom of the country so that we could all be liberated to live
together irrespective of race, colour and creed. These concepts are now
truisms and common cliches, but in those days they represented heresy and
became the reason for two decades of vilification and isolation which I had
to suffer. Nonetheless, I kept on my straight and narrow path and I
continued to defend and protect my enemies. I do not think anyone in South
Africa held as many rallies as I did under the banner of "Free
Mandela", nor has anyone else quoted and propagated as much as I did
the speeches and documentation of ANC leaders, which at the time were banned
and prohibited. I felt that I never left the ANC, albeit the ANC had left
me.
Even my church tried to isolate me because I would not go
along with the Kairos Document in which the South African Council of
Churches had declared the armed struggle a "just war" which could
be theologically justified. As a theologian in my own right I could not
accept such a fundamental departure from the evangelic teachings. Things
became even worse when I was forced by the concern I had for my people to
reject the call made by the ANC in exile for international sanctions against
my country and the urging of foreigners to disinvest. I knew well that
sanctions and disinvestment would have but a minimal impact in securing the
demise of apartheid. I was right, as our economy reorganized itself
internally and the prosperous white minority did not suffer under sanctions.
If anything it benefitted from an unintended system of international
economic protectionism. However, I knew well that sanctions would affect the
poorest of the poor, as they would shrink the economic bases, leaving those
who were on the margin of the economy out on a limb of hunger and despair. I
also knew that such shrinkage of the economic bases would have long lasting
implications as it would reduce the rate and scope of our economic recovery
after liberation. My predictions proved to be tragically correct.
Under sanctions, the poorest of the poor suffered untold
misery. After liberation our economy did not recover and we are still
struggling to attract back those investors we chased away. Without fast
economic recovery and a rapid expansion of our economic bases there is
little hope to bring into the mainstream of development all the
underdeveloped segments of our population and to begin redressing the legacy
of apartheid. Because of my positions I was labeled "Margaret Thatcher’s
lapdog" and was regarded as a conservative, a counter-revolutionary or
even an unwitting supporter of apartheid. The fact is that I have been a
radical all my life and I know few people who are more liberal than I am.
The fact is also that in our context the Western political classification
and labels such as "liberal", "conservative",
"right wing" or "left wing" make little sense, and
indeed, if anything, show the lack of comprehension of the analysts who
employ them. I believe in the free market because I believe in progress and
I am aware that only the unabridged forces of the free market may produce
the wealth and progress necessary to redress the plight of the poorest of
the poor. This is now an element of common sense, but twenty years ago it
was considered heresy.
South Africa is a complex country now, but it was even
more complex before liberation. However, the challenges confronting us now
are still very much intertwined with the complexities we inherited from the
past. Many unresolved issues continue to haunt us. In the past eight years I
have served in the Government of the new South Africa as the Minister of
Home Affairs. It has been neither easy nor simple. During the first five
years I was entitled to be in Cabinet under a provision of the interim
Constitution which mandated a Government of National Unity. The purpose of
my taking advantage of this provision was merely that of promoting
reconciliation between the IFP and the ANC to heal the wounds amongst our
respective constituencies. No formalized peace process ever took place to
declare an end to the low intensity civil war between the IFP and the ANC.
This was not done because we still labour under the illusion that we can
ignore what really happened. It was not done so that we could avoid having
to confront the truth and deal with the issues of culpability and reveal the
aggressor and his real motives, all of which would undermine the rhetoric of
liberation on which much of our nation-building efforts are now predicated.
For this reason, it was essential that our people could
see their leaders cooperating and working together at the highest level of
Government so that they could find it in their hearts not only to reconcile,
but also to work together in the task of reconstruction and development with
those who were once their enemies. For this reason, President Mbeki and I
decided to bring the work of reconciliation forward even after the end of
the Government of National Unity. After the 1999 elections, President Mbeki
offered me the Deputy Presidency of South Africa. However, he then withdrew
his offer because his KwaZulu Natal component had imposed on him the
condition that I could only be Deputy President if I were willing to
relinquish the IFP premiership of that Province to the ANC, in spite of the
IFP having received the majority of votes at the elections. It has not been
easy, either for me or for President Mbeki, to walk this path of
reconciliation. However, history should praise him for his willingness to
bear the difficulties of this process.
The present juncture is one of the most difficult. Various
circumstances seem to indicate that the coalition Government between the IFP
and the ANC may have come into some difficulties. It is not possible to
predict whether such difficulties may be overcome or whether they will mark
the end of the IFP-ANC cooperation within Government. However, both the IFP
and the ANC have committed to continuing the path of reconciliation, even if
we are no longer in the position to cooperate in Government. For the IFP it
is essential that reconciliation continues. In fact, violence against the
IFP has never stopped, although it has diminished. In the past ten years
alone over 400 of our leaders and office bearers have been killed in
targeted assassinations. No party in any established democracy could compete
in a democratic system under such conditions. Throughout my life I have
always preached nonviolence and have invited the ANC leadership to become
proactive in preaching nonviolence amongst their constituency at this
crucial juncture of our history. I am very concerned about a resurgence of
violence against the IFP.
My greatest concern is about preserving and promoting
democracy. South Africa can only realize its full democratic potential in
the context of robust, free and open policy debates, multiparty dynamics,
and progressive entrenchment of the rule of law to replace the rule of man.
I hope that in the future our voters will have the same democratic options
people have in the United States, and may exercise real choices between two
or more political parties with the likelihood of becoming the future
government. The real test of democracy is not in empowering a majority, but
in the capacity of the system to allow one majority to give way to another
in an orderly, free and conflict-free manner. Most African countries have
failed this test and South Africa must pass it for the sake of its
continent.
There are serious concerns which attach to many new
democracies and relate to the pattern which develops when there is a
one-party state or a dominant-party-state. In such cases not only government
but even society itself becomes identified with the political movement and
the divides between government, state, political party and civil society
blur. One group of people ends up controlling the whole of society,
including the state, the economy and social dynamics, thereby strangling the
vital dynamics of on open and plural society which make progress and
prosperity possible. Stagnation, creeping totalitarianism, obscurantism and
autocracy become part of a complex syndrom which finally spells out that
country’s failure in history. He who wins such new democracy’s first
election, and then proceeds to take control of not only the institutions and
resources of government, including the civil service and parastatals, but
also other elements of civil society, such as media and business, often ends
up in such position that he cannot be replaced through the democratic cycle.
I feel that the completion of my destiny has something to
do with preventing this consolidation of power from occurring for the sake
of South Africa. I am no longer a young man, but I am inspired by the same
passion for politics and freedom which motivated me when I was at Fort Hare
University. I feel much stronger and healthier than I have ever been before
in my life. I am the same age as President Mandela was one year before
taking office as the first President of the new South Africa, which suggests
to me that the age of retirement and tranquility has not yet arrived for me.
I sincerely feel that the strongest democratic challenges for South Africa
are only now beginning. For this reason, I sincerely hope that South Africa
may continue to count on its dialogue with its many friends in the United
States. I strongly feel that South Africa’s foreign relations should tie
our country more to the friends of democracy and progress and less to those
opposing them. For all this, South Africa needs to continue to count on good
and trusted friends such as the many ambassadors of goodwill whom we often
receive from the United States. It is a great privilege for us to be able to
count among them, and to give a special place to our good friend, the much
admired Oprah Winfrey.
|