WeeklySA_AdminKEYWORD: As 94-year-old veteran politician Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi lies ill in hospital, pastor and community leader Paul Njabulo Vilakazi pays homage to the elder statesman…
By Paul Njabulo Vilakazi
The South African region of the old Zululand and Natal has always been a chiefly homogenous of the territory of AmaZulu, including their sovereignty, yet viciously clipped by both the colonial and apartheid powers, which reality had come to sit heavily on the psyche of the young academic Prince Mangusuthu Buthelezi, a descendant of AmaZulu Royalty through his celebrated mother and Song Diva Princess Magogo.
Buthelezi had sadly watched his cousin, King Cyprian ka Bhekuzulu, to whom he became a traditional Prime Minister, having inherited the title from his own father, being reduced to what was then called Paramount Chief, the equivalent of Kaptein used for Nama Royalties, by the Germans in old South West Africa
KaBhekuzulu could not even be awarded license to purchase certain commodities, denied to the then so-called ‘bantoes’, that only white and the so-called Coloureds were allowed to access. Thus, King Cyprian had to use services – at some stage – of an AME Pastor with Mulatto features stationed in the near neighborhoods of the Royal Family, the Rev MD Phetlhu, as a proxy to access for him such needed goods preserved for the so-called “First and Second Class Citizens”.
Even as he studied with political luminaries to be, such as Robert Mugabe at the Fort Hare University, and had enjoyed the membership of the ANC Youth League of the days of AP Mda, Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela; he could not extricate himself from AmaZulu politics of nationality, thus Federalist in nature even in the days of the Union of South Africa.
He was thus a more muted member of the League, as he had chosen to consort with a diverse spectrum of political leaders, even before his fallout with the exiled ANC president, Oliver Tambo
While serving the 1994 Independent Electoral Commission as a mediator alongside Helen Suzman; she had regaled me of stories about Buthelezi and how he had in his younger days spent his time and slept at her house when ever he was in Johannesburg and laughed almost falling on her back as she mused about the Buthelezi who had ultimately come back on the eleventh hour, not only to CODESA, but had to join the beeline of Nelson Mandela and Willem de Klerk to what she had called self-ordained bishops of super-mega churches to desperately woo votes.
In my growing up days, I saw him as a rare phenomenon, as an above-the-cut practitioner of the English Language, especially out of KwaZulu-Natal, where even the AmaZulu academia had a clear wanting command of the language; in a space that all citizens had to speak isiZulu to co-exist with the majority and powerful AmaZulu; as he himself had to pragmatically stand out in order to straddle the South African multiple worlds to be counted a meaningful political player…
Still, he was very volatile when pushed to a corner, personally retorting to literally every letter to any editor written by the young and old challenging his authority and authenticity, such as when he had attended Robert Sobukwe’s funeral and some group advanced on him, asking him to leave or be killed; he had stood up to them, telling them to go ahead and kill him; just as Bishop Desmond Tutu had jumped in to bodily protect him.
He always came closer to very vulgar superlative expletives against words of his oppositions, but rather choosing words that you would end up being sure he had personally coined; such as Balderdash, Bollocks, Claptrap and Poppycock. I leave to your imagination what more IsiZulu expletives he had obviously used in his own Mother Tongue to his own in the hinterlands.
He had a very gentle demeanor when treated with honour towards his erstwhile worst enemies who had even plotted his assassination. He most gracefully took the apology openly made to him by former President Thabo Mbeki.
After us, in the Vaal, East Rand and West Rand had shed so much blood as a result of a mengelmoes of Shenge’s almighty wrath and other political adversarial hawks unleashing even subterranean progroms.
My own family was incidentally most pleasantly taken aback for him to have personally sent a representative of his party to my brother Ambassador Bavumile H Vilakazi’s funeral. Paying his dues to Vilakazi, who had ebulliently interacted with the AmaZulu Indunas on the East Rand, while campaigning for a position of an ANC Executive Mayor out there in 2000.
That on one hand Thabo Mbeki had snubbed the funeral and not even conveying a personal note of commiserations to the family and to the nation.
His widely published spat with the present King must have gotten to his short fuse of a temper at a very advanced old age, landing him at a hospital’s intensive care unit…
In a statement, President Cyril Ramaphosa wished Buthelezi a speedy recovery. Buthelezi has been unwell and was hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit earlier this week.
Ramaphosa has communicated with the Buthelezi family, who have briefed him about the veteran politician’s health condition. He also conveyed that his heartfelt prayers were with the statesman and the family.
Be at peace and be healed, Shenge.
- The Reverend N Njabulo is a pastor and community leader and wrote this tribute in his personal capacity
