The Buthelezi factor
Hope, Marjorie & Young, James
(Paraguay). We had, as someone remarked, brought the world home. By Saturday it was already clear that this was more than South Africa your average reunion. These were not just some...
...That night there was a concert at the Kennedy sonable man, committed to nonviolence and compromise...
...A favorite refrain among Whites in South Africa and abroad On the other hand, about 72 percent of the KwaZulu budget is that Buthelezi consistently eschews violence...
...Once a member of the ANC Youth League, hour hand has advanced considerably...
...Inkatha members have incited Inkatha members to use force against UDF organizers been elected to black township councils, which are widely in areas he considers his turf...
...Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, cornServe your families, serve your cities, your neighbors, the mands a strong constituency...
...Loret Ruppe, current head of the Peace Corps, has of the world respond...
...It is likely that they will stall for pagne, whose energy, effervescence, and willingness to take a time, trying out possible psychological tactics (such as "We chance on a lot of untried, eager Americans made the whole will fight to the end...
...work at home as you have abroad...
...He has subtly than insist on one-person-one-vote...
...But the bond between Who would be a likely candidate for the post of South Sargent Shriver and the volunteers is something special...
...Buthelezi - even above P. W. Botha - as the most popular It isn't just that Peace Corps was a special, even pivotal South African leader...
...He repeatedly rally in Durban...
...to see how their own people and the rest thing go...
...His long speeches almost West could continue to push him toward center stage...
...The CRIC study describes regarded as stooges for the white government...
...It "works its dent's refusal to impose economic sanctions...
...We may not have TRIBALISM OR NATIONAL UNITY joined up thinking conscious thoughts of waging peace, but when RPCV-turned state legislator David Magnani asked us to As THE WINDS of change blow in the direction of some think, just for a minute, what it would mean if the Peace Corps sort of showdown in South Africa, the prospect of a traded budgets with the Pentagon, the audience roared its negotiated compromise settlement there looms on the approval...
...Walter Wilcauses ordinary people to do extraordinary deeds, and his liams, who writes for the Heritage Foundation's syndicate, words ran like an electric current through the crowd...
...There are even signs that the future-planners in PreAnd then there was Sarge, that human magnum of cham- toria's government sense this...
...Buthelezi would wear Buthelezi has denounced as an ANC front the 500,000 the stigma attached to the "Internal settlement" worked out in member Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Zimbabwe/Rhodesia in 1977, between then-President Ian which together with the Council of Unions of South Africa and Smith and three African leaders (who subsequently became Azanian Conferation of Trade Unions engineered the well- known as "the three blacksmiths...
...And like concerted campaign to promote Buthelezi...
...stressed to us during a private interview in Ulundi, his It will be interesting to observe UWUSA...
...to express opposition to apartheid...
...The Zulu chief consistently attacks the United discussion of open politics...
...By Saturday it was already clear that this was more than South Africa your average reunion...
...times...
...This anniversary gathering proved Wall Street Journal, has picked Buthelezi as "man of the special because it reminded us of values we share, beliefs we year" for his moderate stance and his willingness to join in a still cherish about our responsibilities in the global commu- government of national reconciliation on other than a onenity...
...at a cordial meeting with Reagan at the White House in When Shriver, "the Peace Corps' only draftee," spoke, it February 1985, the Zulu chief expressed strong approval of was of the early days and the many funny things along the way...
...The Financial Mail, South Africa's experience in our lives...
...The Reverend Richard Neuhaus nation's poor...
...Surveys show that among NANCY AMIDEI Blacks living around Durban, Johannesburg, and Pretoria (Nancy Amidei frequently reports on poverty, hunger, and support for the Zulu chief and Inkatha have plummeted during human services issues in these pages...
...Center...
...There was no subtlety about the new an egomaniac, and anything but nonviolent...
...But he may frequently castigated Archbishop Desmond Tutu (even after still be nourishing his dream of becoming South Africa's first the latter intervened bodily to save his life when militant black president...
...Notwithstanding his tattered credentials with youths attacked Buthelezi at the funeral of Pan Africanist Blacks, the white power structures in South Africa and the Congress leader Robert Sobukwe...
...But the latter broke with him in 1980, and since has diminished...
...A study conducted by the opposition Commonweal: 518 Progressive Party, which was considering an alliance with coordinated May 1 work stoppage of some 2.5 million workers Inkatha, discovered that even Zulus looked on Buthelezi with and students...
...It is always dwell on slights he has suffered at the hands of his possible they could even impose such a leadership in the near enemies...
...It V was Mugabe's election in 1980 that finally brought some semblance of peace to the country...
...A detailed workKwaZulu capital, that he has consistently rejected Pretoria's ing paper by the Lutheran World Ministries' Community Reproffered homeland status, and has opted instead for the am- source and Information Center (CRIC) suggests that Inkabiguous middle ground that KwaZulu be self-governing for the tha fears the development of a revolutionary class-conscioustime being but non-independent...
...But in the end they will have little choice won the respect and appreciation of former volunteers for her but to make radical changes if they wish to keep the economy spirited defense of the Peace Corps in politically difficult of that bountiful country from becoming a wasteland...
...Everywhere, people stood around talking, reluctant to Time reports that in a recent poll, South African whites chose let go...
...ReaReturned volunteers have established Sargent Shriver gan, you hear him denounce the African National Congress awards for RPCVs who continue to work in the spirit of the (ANC) as a Communist front, and praise nonviolent leaders he Peace Corps' ideals...
...Pretoria has similar violence and threats of violence against activist clergy, permitted Buthelezi to speak on state-sponsored television and concludes that while Inkatha condemns violence as a while other black leaders were denied access to such media...
...But in the last two years of Zulu royal family (well over 90 percent of those who belong to violence, as the West and Pretoria have dragged their feet, the Inkatha are Zulus...
...Human Events, the other unquantifiable, inexplicable miracles in times past, he conservative weekly, reports enthusiastically that "what sets spoke of the "miracle" of the Peace Corps' continued exis- him apart from the black militants is that he hopes for a tence and force for good...
...Be describes Buthelezi as a man who decries violence and, unlike servants of peace, he said...
...Although he eschews tribalism, he often reminds Blacks Buthelezi and his Inkatha movement are a force to be of the Zulu tribe's mighty past and boasts of his roots in the reckoned with in South Africa...
...Africa's first black prime minister...
...That's something worth holding onto...
...future...
...We had, as someone remarked, brought the world home...
...She was applauded many times...
...The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, and rial service at Arlington Cemetery for the 198 volunteers who several liberal newspapers have portrayed Buthelezi as a readied overseas...
...Inkatha's 1984 constitution that set up a tricameral parliament for theme has been that the political domain belongs to it, while Whites, Coloreds, and Indians, but not Blacks...
...Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, remains then the rift has widened...
...Today Buthelezi alternates between the one figure who might yet create some kind of relative denouncing the ANC-in-exile for "seeking a bloody show- stability in South Africa...
...Reagan's "constructive engagement" policy and the presiBut most of all he spoke of the value of service...
...He spoke of the moral vision that peaceful resolution of South Africa's problems...
...magic from below, not from above," he reminded us, deliver- Among some segments of the American media there is a ing on "the promise, not the power, of America...
...One is Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, who heads Worker Program" in his name for former volunteers wishing KwaZulu and the KwaZulu-based Inkatha movement...
...He has with some post in a black majority government...
...Other black South Africans - especially the chose to inaugurate his own United Workers' Union of South young people - tend to see him as a puppet, a divisive force, Africa (UWUSA...
...sive...
...Above all else," says the Financial of people who, if not "the finest human beings ever Mail, "he is an unabashed free marketeer...
...means of overthrowing the government, it is prepared to use There is, furthermore, little question that Buthelezi is divi- such means in crushing opposition to itself...
...10 October 1986: 519...
...The fact is that comes from Pretoria, and Buthelezi has declared his willing- Buthelezi has praised Inkatha vigilantes for beating up stuness to compromise for power-sharing, at least initially, rather dents who dared to be critical of his movement...
...Today, young urban for years he fostered the image of Inkatha as the internal wing Blacks are in no mood for moderation, and Buthelezi's power of the ANC...
...These were not just some middle-aged people who shared the same school, but Americans of all ages, races, political persuasions, and creeds, who shared a common belief in the ability of any individual to make a difference, and THE BUTHELEZI FACTOR the obligation of every individual to try...
...MARJORIE HOPE & JAMES YOUNG (Marjorie Hope and James Young are the authors of The South African Churches in a Revolutionary Situation [Orbis], and most recently The Faces of Homelessness published by TTY" Lexington Books...
...If you listen to Mr...
...Moreover, he rejected the ness on the part of the organized working class...
...Buthelezi may be realistic enough to see that he church, and service organizations that has spearheaded the is no match for Mandela, that he would be lucky to survive increasingly unified opposition to Pretoria's policies...
...horizon...
...union's aims: coffins marked "COSATU" were exhibited at a It seems unfair to call Buthelezi a "puppet...
...He continues workers should confine themselves to economic issues...
...Like Peace...
...Shriver's children are starting a "Peace knows...
...Piqued by the success of COSATU, Buthelezi deep suspicion...
...Besides, it was terrific just to be surrounded by thousands person-one-vote basis...
...In fact, to spend a year at the Kennedy Center on Ethics...
...The settlement excluded the two guerrilla armies led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, and while Bishop Abel Muzorewa became president in 1979, it soon became clear that he could not end the war...
...the past two years...
...serve, serve, serve...
...Eventually, a new leadership Democratic Front (UDF), the nonracial coalition of labor, would emerge...
...come increasingly discredited...
...sees Buthelezi (and Botha) at the center of a "new covenant" On Sunday we marched from the Lincoln Memorial to an that would bring the divided people of the land of apartheid ecumenical (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist) memo- together...
...He would welcome back exiles into down," and calling imprisoned ANC leader Nelson Mandela active roles, engaging a spectrum of South Africans in a his friend...
...gathered," are at least willing to work for some common Among South African Blacks, however, Buthelezi has beideals...
...But it would last but a short time...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 17
