Fighting Apartheid From Within
HAHN, LORNA
A ZULU VOICE Fighting Apartheid from Within by Lorna Hahn Ata ceremony held here October 26, Chief M. Gatsha Buth-elezi of South Africa received the AFL-CIO's second annual George Meany Human...
...Throughout, he has withstood all the central government's coercion and cajolery, keeping KwaZulu a part of the Republic of South Africa...
...In conjunction with Colored and Asian groups, and the leaders of Kangwene, the Swazi national homeland, he set up the South African Black Alliance...
...Prominent politicians and intellectuals, both Afrikaaner and English, have since conferred at length with Inkatha representatives...
...For over a decade, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) has recognized the ANC and PAC as the spokesmen for South Africa's blacks...
...But Buthelezi is currently irking the government most severely by his opposition to its attempts at cementing a confederation with the four already independent homelands and Swaziland (the tiny sovereign monarchy bordering on South Africa and Mozambique, not to be confused with Kangwene...
...Recently, however many of the Chiefs former detractors have begun to realize that he has built a formidable organization...
...Moreover, he argued, in seizing control of Ingwavuma from KwaZulu, the Ministry of Cooperation and Development was violating the homeland government's rights...
...It hoped by this stroke to rid itself of approximately 1 million blacks and at the same time entice Swaziland into the confederation...
...Buthelezi captured the backing of many white liberals in 1980 when he blocked a new phase in separate development by refusing to join a council of homeland heads...
...When Buthelezi arrived in the United States to accept the Meany Award, however, African diplomats in New York and Washington were eager to meet with him...
...A disciplined hierarchy took shape, topped by a central committee...
...Its ultimate goal is a national convention where delegates from all social and political factions will draft a new constitution based on majority rule...
...More important , many blacks who previously rejected his moderation—among them ANC and BPC members—have rallied around him...
...Emphasizing that liberation would require lengthy psychological, economic and political preparation, Inkatha mobilized first in KwaZulu, forming self-help groups such as farm cooperatives...
...Inkatha's creed is nonviolent...
...Buthelezi challenged the plan in court, charging that Parliament alone has the authority to cede land...
...in 1972...
...Today, other peoples account for roughly 15 per cent of the 360,000 dues-paying members...
...Although the Botha administration and the ANC refused invitations to participate, the commission's recommendations for shifting to multiracial rule, issued last March, are being vigorously discussed by whites across the nation...
...He stepped into a political void...
...Inkatha's membership quadrupled over the following two years...
...The ANC and its offshoot, the Pan African Congress (PAC), both outlawed since 1960, had long focused on launching terrorist strikes from bases in neighboring countries...
...He joined the Youth League of the African National Congress where his friends included the two present ANC heads, imprisoned Nelson Mandela and exiled Oliver Tambo, as well as Zimbabwean Prime Minister Robert Mugabe...
...Botha's government has come to this realization, too...
...The June 1976 uprisings in Soweto, the black township outside Johannesburg, convinced many black South Africans that Inkatha's approach was the correct one...
...When, in 1970, the government nonetheless succeeded in pressing a homeland framework upon Zulu-land—an inhospitable patchwork of 48 noncontiguous territories along the Indian Ocean in Natal Province—Buthelezi launched the controversial strategy that has become his trademark: Using government institutions against the government...
...The honor—shared posthumously by Dr...
...His Inkatha YeNkuiuleko Ye-Swizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement), founded seven years ago, frequently was underestimated or criticized for "working within the system...
...The issue remains in limbo until Parliament convenes next January...
...Even some military commanders—concerned about the apartheid system's ultimate stability—are said to have flirted with the idea of consulting Buthelezi on South Africa's future...
...A month later, the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly formally approved Inkatha's constitution, thus linking the movement with a "legitimate" governmental body and making it more difficult for Pretoria to attack...
...By September 1977, Buthelezi felt strong enough to defy then-Minister of Justice, Police and Prisons Jimmy Kruger's threats and amend the movement's rules to officially admit non-Zulus...
...Buthelezi's courage has now been noted abroad as well...
...Neil Agget, who died in a South African prison early this year—was bestowed "in recognition of your outstanding leadership of the black peopleof South Africa in their struggle for equality, for your relentless opposition to the brutal system of apartheid, for your consistent advocacy of nonviolence as an instrument of change in South Africa in spite of the provocations and violence facing you, for your dedication to the ongoing struggle for human rights, and for your unwavering commitment to freedom for all peoples...
...In 1978, Buthelezi broadened the front against separate development...
...Buthelezi was not always spoken of so well...
...In 1957 he assumed his hereditary post as Chief of the Buthelezi tribe—a branch of the Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group—and rapidly emerged as leader of the Zulu resistance to the homelands policy, originally formulated in 1951...
...He agreed to become Chief Executive Of ficer of the Zululand Territorial Authority in order to prevent a puppet from taking the post and accepting "independence...
...The judicial battles have roused new opposition to the government among whites and blacks alike, and further enhanced Buthelezi's stature...
...Some, in fact, are working to win OAU recognition for Inkatha, and to have Buthelezi present his case against South Africa's designs before the UN General Assembly...
...Fifty three years old, Buthelezi became active in the fight for liberation as a university student...
...The other major current, the late Steven Biko's Black People's Convention (BPQ?also known as the Black Consciousness movement—was confined mainly to urban intellectuals...
...Buthelezi founded Inkatha in March 1975...
...Two lower courts upheld his position, and on September 30 the Supreme Court concurred...
...Buthelezi combines idealism and pragmatism, oratory and organizational skill in a manner reminiscent of the young Habib Bourguiba, leader of the antico-lonial struggle in Tunisia and President of that country since 1957...
...Pretoria made its latest move in this direction in June, announcing that all of Kangwene plus—to underline Buth-elezi's powerlessness—the Ingwavuma district of KwaZulu would be ceded to Swaziland...
...Prime MinisterP.W...
...It soon spread throughout Natal, to urban areas as well as rural, and then to other provinces...
...Buthelezi served as its Chief Executive Councillor until 1976, then he became Chief Minister...
...Eventually, this defiance could force an essential restructuring of South African society...
...While several African heads of state were friendly to Buthelezi, others made a point of their hostility because they saw him as collaborating in the creation of a Bantustan...
...As Buthelezi points out, if blacks in the now fully "independent" Transkei, Bophutatswana, Venda, and Ciskei homelands had followed his example, they could have similarly foiled the white regime...
...Having gained this show of support from the country's 6 million Zulus (about half of whom live in KwaZulu), Buthelezi sought to extend Inkatha to blacks of all ethnic backgrounds and social strata...
...Zululand was renamed KwaZulu Lorna Hahn is the director of the Association on Third World Affairs...
...For Inkatha has already demonstrated its ability to thwart the progress of "separate development"—the regime's plan designed to strip the country's blacks of South African citizenship and compel them to become nationals of various poorly situated tribal "homelands...
...A ZULU VOICE Fighting Apartheid from Within by Lorna Hahn Ata ceremony held here October 26, Chief M. Gatsha Buth-elezi of South Africa received the AFL-CIO's second annual George Meany Human Rights Award...
...it preaches the methods used to great effect by Bourguiba's old Neo-Deslour Party: crippling business and the government with strikes and boycotts...
...Initially an outgrowth of an old Zulu social network, it was dubbed a "cultural" movement to skirt legal restrictions against black "political" associations...
...Despite increasing sympathy among impatient black youths for the ANC's tactics, Inkatha's influence has grown steadily, and has begun to reach some whites...
...In those outbursts, spearheaded by high school students, street violence proved futile against the ruthless might of the government security forces, and spontaneous action unproductive without a solid political apparatus behind it...
...One of his recent projects was an interracial commission "to explore peaceful change in Natal province...
Vol. 65 • November 1982 • No. 20
