Johannesburg, Sept. 9, 2022 – Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a veteran South African politician and Zulu prince, has died at the age of 95, the presidency said on Saturday.
The founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party served two terms as minister of home affairs in the post-apartheid government after burying the hatchet with the governing African National Congress party (ANC) in 1994.
“I am deeply saddened to announce the passing of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Prince of KwaPhindangene, Traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Monarch and Nation, and the Founder and President Emeritus of the Inkatha Freedom Party,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.
Buthelezi, who was a controversial figure during the apartheid liberation struggle, had a procedure for back pain in July and was later readmitted to hospital when the pain did not subside, according to local news website News24.
He founded the IFP in 1975 as a national cultural movement that became a political force in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province, and his party was embroiled in bloody conflicts with the ANC in the 1980s and 1990s.
His last-minute decision to participate in the first post-apartheid election in 1994 brought peace between the two parties. The vote brought the ANC and its leader, the late Nelson Mandela, to power after decades of white minority rule.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation said Buthelezi’s life intersected at multiple points with Mandela’s and that his legacy was an “imposing and complex one”.
“In many ways, the two leaders came to embody an understanding of a reconciliation which had no need of forgiveness, nor forgetting of the past, nor even of learning to like one another – it was simply about determining to get on together,” the foundation said in a statement.
South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party described Buthelezi as a “great leader”.
“Prince Buthelezi was a giant on South Africa’s political landscape,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said.
Buthelezi grew up in a traditional household, spending his early years as a herdboy. In 1953, he was installed as acting chief of the prominent Buthelezi clan and four years later was confirmed as chief.
He was married to Irene Mzila, a nurse, eschewing the polygamy followed by many Zulu chiefs. They had three sons and four daughters. (Al Jazeera)
