BONGANI NGQULUNGA | Painful history thwarts Buthelezi's wish for reconciliation of ANC and IFP

For a number of years before his death over a week ago, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the founder and president emeritus of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), advocated for reconciliation between the African National Congress (ANC) and the IFP. On several occasions, he expressed a wish that such reconciliation should happen before he died. His death without his wish being fulfilled raises important questions regarding the relationship between the two parties and whether the proposed reconciliation is possible at all.  

For many, Buthelezi’s advocacy for reconciliation between the two parties would have come as a surprise. After all, the decade leading up to the first democratic elections in 1994 was marked by bloody violence between the two political parties during which an estimated 20,000 people were killed. How could then the leader of one political party that was a major participant in the conflict turn around and advocate for reconciliation? In order to answer this question, it is important to briefly discuss the historical links between Buthelezi and the ANC, as well as the reasons behind the breakdown of his relationship with the ANC.

As is well known, Buthelezi has consistently argued that the IFP was built on the foundations laid by the ANC in 1912. He contended that it is anchored on the ideals that animated its founders such as Pixley ka Isaka Seme, John Langalibalele Dube, Solomon Plaatje, Sefako Makgatho, Walter Rubusana, Thomas Mapikela and many others. Those ideals included first and foremost the unity of the African people and ensuring that they worked together in order to achieve liberation and full citizenship in the country of their birth.

In other instances, Buthelezi went further than linking the IFP and the ANC on the ideological ground of African nationalism. In an interview with a radio station based in Durban, Buthelezi claimed that he was in fact a member of the ANC and that he had never renounced his membership of the party. Rather, it was the ANC that abandoned him after that November 1979 meeting after which Buthelezi and the ANC got alienated. During the fractious decade of the 1980s, Buthelezi used to claim that he, rather than the leadership of the ANC in exile at the time, was the standard bearer of the ideals of the original ANC. He was also the representative of what he referred to at the time Black South Africa.

This brief historical background is critical to come to terms with if we are to understand Buthelezi’s call for reconciliation between the two political parties. At Buthelezi’s funeral last weekend, senior leaders of both political parties, including President Cyril Ramaphosa and Velenkosi Hlabisa, the president of the IFP, once again issued clarion calls for reconciliation between their parties. The main question is why it has not happened despite Buthelezi’s expressed wish, which appears to be shared by leaders from both parties?

The reasons seem partly historical and also contemporary. On the historical side, the political violence of the 1980s and early 1990s deeply damaged the relations between the two political parties. Some of the leaders and supporters from the two parties lost family members and neighbours during the violence. To ask them to overlook this painful history appears to be asking for more than they can take for now. This painful memory has been at full display in the aftermath of Buthelezi’s death during which certain sections of our society have condemned him as a murderer while some have defended and praised him.

This history appears to have scuppered other initiatives in the past aimed at bringing the two parties together. For instance, when former president Nelson Mandela proposed that he and Buthelezi should address joint rallies of the two political parties, there was strong opposition from senior leaders of the ANC in KZN, who pointed at the history of violence. Similar opposition prevented Buthelezi from becoming the deputy president of the country when the position was offered to him by former president Thabo Mbeki. Numerous attempts in the recent past at reconciliation appear to have been scuppered by political differences between the two parties in KZN.

One proposal that appears to have fallen through the crack of political wrangling between the two parties was the awarding of the national Order of Luthuli to Buthelezi in recognition of the role he played in the Struggle against apartheid and for democracy in SA. Considering Buthelezi’s close relationship with Chief Albert Luthuli, there is no doubt that the order would have meant a great deal to him and would have played an important role in bringing the two parties together. Buthelezi has died without this recognition being bestowed on him.

A major explanation for these failed attempts at reconciliation is that the ANC and the IFP are major political competitors for power in KZN. Leaders of both parties in the province are weary at doing something that may be perceived as giving a political competitor a modicum of political advantage, real or simply perceived. The upcoming general elections next year suggest that true reconciliation between the two political parties, especially in KZN where the very control of government is at stake, is a relatively distant prospect.

The IFP’s decision to join the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa, a coalition of certain opposition parties suggests that it sees its immediate future lying with the political opposition rather than the ruling party. While this political alliance does not represent the rejection of political reconciliation between the two parties, it does mean that there is a long road to fulfilling Buthelezi’s wish.

• Ngqulunga is the director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study based at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of The Man Who Founded the ANC: A Biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme.