Mandela and Buthelezi Agree to Ending Violence in Townships

Mandela and Buthelezi Agree to Ending Violence in Townships

On 30 March 1990, Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress (ANC) and Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) agreed to meet to negotiate ending violence in the townships. The two agreed to make a joint appeal for an end to the violence in South Africa’s battle-scarred Natal province, where political camps had been engaged in violence since the early 1980s.

A spokesman for Buthelezi said the meeting was to be held Monday, 2 April 1990, outside Pietermaritzburg at a locality, known as Taylor’s Halt, which had been the scene of fierce clashes between the two rival parties. An ANC official, confirming the plan, said it was made because “people are dying horrendously in Natal”.

In the evening of 30 March 1990, Mandela told the South African Press Association that “this is no time for people with political differences to stand on ceremony. We must unite now in our commitment to end the violence in Natal and work out a strategy we are all united behind publicly. I hope that when we stand on the platform together and appeal for an end to violence the people will heed our call.”

On Wednesday, 28 March 1990, thousands of heavily armed supporters of Buthelezi went on a rampage against ANC-aligned groups around Pietermaritzburg, 56 kilometres west of the port city of Durban, burning 140 homes, and killing or wounding scores of ANC-supporters. Local authorities on 30 March 1990 said that at least 21 men, women and children were known to have died, but South African media reported that more bodies had been discovered in the burned-out wreckage of homes, bringing the total to about 30.

Buthelezi had been requesting the ANC since Mandela’s release from prison on 11 February 1990 for a meeting to help end the violence, which had taken over 2,000 lives in three years and given Natal a reputation as “the killing fields” of South Africa. However, delicate questions of where to meet and whether Mandela would first see the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelethini, separately had delayed the finalisation of such an agreement.

The need to bring an end to the internecine slaughter had become so imperative, prompting Buthelezi to commit that he was ready to share the platform with his bitterest foes “to be able to say that black leaders are now united in their opposition to violence”. But local analysts were uncertain that even a joint appeal by Mandela and Buthelezi would end the fighting, in which rival gangs and supporters of the two leaders battled for control of townships and territory.

On 26 February 1990, at a rally attended by more than 100,000 pro-ANC devotees in Durban, Mandela called upon his supporters to “take your guns, your knives and your ‘pangas’ (machetes) and throw them into the sea”. But his appeal calmed the situation for less than 24 hours, as violence flared up again in certain hotspots. Largely, this violence was stirred by the fact that groups supporting the ANC had been extending their influence into townships and areas traditionally under the control of Buthelezi’s Inkatha Movement, a Zulu-dominated political organisation.

It became obvious that Inkatha supporters had decided to fight back for losing support on a major scale, assisted by the apartheid police and the military, as well as the homeland police of the nominally self-governing KwaZulu Bantustan, which Buthelezi headed. Oscar Dhlomo, who became an independent mediator after quitting as Inkatha’s Secretary-General in 1990, said “The meeting will certainly advance the peace process if it opens channels of communication between the ANC and Inkatha and encourages the possibility of joint action to stop the violence”.

However, Nelson Mandela called off the planned meeting with Chief Buthelezi for 2 April 1990 because of strong grass-roots resistance from ANC militants, who argued that a meeting would bestow undeserved credibility on Buthelezi, as a personality cult had developed around him. The two leaders only met on 29 January 1991 after months of delays and arguments in an effort to defuse the bitter rivalry between their supporters, which had resulted in thousands of deaths.

In a statement issued on 26 July 1990, with was titled “Inkatha Seeks to Spread Its Violence Beyond Natal”, the ANC maintained that “an Inkatha leader addressed a meeting at Unit Number 1 of Jabulani Hostel. During the course of his address, it is reported that he incited his audience to launch physical attacks on persons wearing or displaying the hammer and sickle insignia or other emblems associated with the South African Communist Party.”

In the statement the ANC demanded that apartheid “President de Klerk take immediate steps to put an end to the violence by: ordering the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of the Sebokeng massacre; ordering the immediate suspension of the police officers who stood by while the vigilantes attacked people in Sebokeng; taking action against those fomenting violence in the PWV area; instituting an independent inquiry to investigate the violence of the weekend and the attempts to spread the violence beyond Natal.”

Speaking in Oslo, Norway, at the end of August 1990, the President of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, maintained that “Time does not allow for us to give a detailed account of the pattern of the current spate of violence. What is clear, however, is that forces opposed to our peace initiative are behind the latest violent eruptions. Their strategic objective is to undermine the process that we have so delicately nurtured. In this regard, the role of the South African police has been less than helpful. The ANC will not allow this violence to derail the process of negotiations. It is for this reason that the ANC shall leave no stone unturned in an effort to normalise and stabilise the situation in our country.”

In addressing this challenge, Mandela declared that “We have already set in motion a process which we hope will usher in peace and reconciliation amongst the various political organisations and our people. The international community has an ongoing responsibility to assist and strengthen our efforts to promote peace and democracy in South Africa. The so-called black-on-black violence has its roots in the system of apartheid, which continues to be firmly in place. It is apartheid which continues to sustain this violence. Indeed, in some instances, the right wing has carried its threat out by resorting to violence, so the threat to the peace process remains real. We are still far from the stage where we can say that a fundamental and irreversible transformation has taken place in South Africa.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
David Ottaway, “Mandela and Buthelezi to Meet on Black Violence”, The Washington Post, 29 March 1990.
African National Congress Statement, “Inkatha Seeks to Spread Its Violence Beyond Natal”, Sechaba, September 1990.
Nelson Mandela, “The Human Race: Our Collective Responsibility”, Sechaba, October 1990.

Castro Khwela
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