![]() We did it to end a low-intensity civil war,” Buthelezi told Reuters in an interview in July 2003. Neither is it easy for President Thabo Mbeki to have me and my colleagues in the cabinet. “It’s not pleasant, it’s not easy for me. The price for peace was Buthelezi’s participation in a government of national unity as minister of home affairs – a ministry that became a byword for corruption and incompetence under his watch. ![]() ANC rivalryīuthelezi was a champion of his people and a prominent figure in the struggle against apartheid but his rivalry with the ANC led to fraught days and much bloodshed before South Africa was able to elect its first Black leader.Ĭritics dubbed Buthelezi a “warlord” but to his legion of followers in the rural Zulu heartland, he was a visionary.įor a decade before the end of white rule in 1994, Buthelezi – dressed in leopard skins and waving a short silver-topped stick – was a familiar sight at rallies while Inkatha was embroiled in conflict with the ANC.Ībout 20,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes as fighting raged in KwaZulu and in men’s hostels built to house migrant labourers who toiled in the gold mines near Johannesburg. He was married to Irene Mzila, a nurse, eschewing the polygamy followed by many Zulu chiefs. In 1953, he was installed as acting chief of the prominent Buthelezi clan and four years later was confirmed as chief. “Prince Buthelezi was a giant on South Africa’s political landscape,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said.īuthelezi grew up in a traditional household, spending his early years as a herdboy. South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party described Buthelezi as a “great leader”. “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. 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”. The vote brought the ANC and its leader, the late Nelson Mandela, to power after decades of white minority rule. His last-minute decision to participate in the first post-apartheid election in 1994 brought peace between the two parties. ![]() 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. “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.īuthelezi, 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. 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. Prince, NOTHING COMPARES.Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a veteran South African politician and Zulu prince, has died at the age of 95, the presidency said on Saturday. We have lost our greatest living musician. I am sad, but I will smile when I think of every second that I had the fortune of being in his company. He's somewhere within every song I've ever written. It would be silly to say that he has inspired our music. But, some of my greatest, funniest (yes, he was hilarious), and most prolific encounters and conversations about music came from the moments that I spent with him. But, we should all turn away from that and HONOR this musician that changed all of our lives, our perspectives, our feeling, our whole being. I'm still in shock as I write this and I feel this overwhelming grief. ![]() "Mommy, who is that singing?" Seems weird but it's true.
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