Buthelezi Mobilisation of IFP Supporters in Thokoza
On 11 August 1993, Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was addressing a crowd of approximately 2 500 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) supporters in Thokoza, in which he indicated that “as president of the IFP, I direct that every member and supporter of my party, the Inkatha Freedom Party, translates the letters I-F-P into the slogan ‘I’m for peace’”. According to Buthelezi, the reason why there was no peace was the continued existence of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), to whose “evil activities” the apartheid government was turning a blind eye.
Buthelezi added that he was “bitterly opposed” to the inclusion of MK in a multiparty peacekeeping force, as “Nowhere in the world has an ill-trained, underdeveloped and wrongly-motivated liberation army ever been able to act as an honourable peacekeeping force”. For Buthelezi, “the handing over of responsibility by the South African government to such a peacekeeping force will only exacerbate the circumstances in which endemic violence is now flourishing in South Africa”.
Buthelezi then called for the “disbandment of MK”, and warned the apartheid government and the whole world, that “the absorption of MK into the South African Defence Force, and the absorption of MK into a so-called multi-party peacekeeping force is a total prescription for disaster”. These utterances by Buthelezi were driven by the activities of the Phola Park “Self-Defence Unit (SDU)
