Mangosuthu Buthelezi had his own vision for a democratic South Africa

At the age of 14 Mangosuthu Buthelezi was presented with an assegai and plunged it into the ground. His father had just died; with the spear, and a loud shout, he was claiming his inheritance. That inheritance, he insisted later, was royal, because he was the son of a princess. Other members of the family, of similar standing, did not take the title “prince”. He made the most of it. When he became chief minister of KwaZulu—a poor rump of the old Zulu nation granted nominal self-rule under apartheid—he said that job was hereditary, like the traditional prime-minister role his grandfather had played for the royal family. Again, people murmured. What was not in doubt was that, in the chaotic and often bloody years of South Africa’s transition to democracy, he was the most powerful man in the Zulu nation. Any belittlers or critics could expect a long, furious riposte punched out on his ancient typewriter, if not a lawsuit.

Assegais stayed, and became a symbol of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) that he founded in 1975. He flourished that short, stabbing weapon in honour of King Shaka, who had built up the Zulu nation as a military power. The greatest moment in Zulu history was the rout of British forces, with assegais, in 1879 at the battle of Isandlwana. Within hours, the British made a stand at Rorke’s Drift; and in “Zulu”, a blockbuster film about that, Mr Buthelezi played his ancestor King Cetshwayo, with assegai, cowhide shield and royal leopard-skin cape. He loved the part. When in 1992, at the height of violent clashes between the IFP and its rivals in the townships, the authorities banned the carrying of assegais at rallies, he ignored it. They were part of what Zulus were; they were what the power in their arms was for. He also told his followers to crack the skulls of any “riff-raff” in the party, and to squeeze them as they would wring the necks of scrawny cockerels crowing on dunghills; but then denied that those were dangerous words.

His creed, he insisted, was non-violence. He did not believe, like many of his rivals in the left-wing African National Congress (ANC), that Marxist revolution was needed in South Africa. On the contrary, it meant disaster, dragging the country into the Soviet orbit. Instead he preferred long-drawn-out negotiations between the various factions, leading to a federal state. Philosophically he followed Edmund Burke, who had opposed the French revolution: a conservative who found friends at the Heritage Foundation and backers in Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He liked to think of KwaZulu as a constitutional monarchy on the British model, rather than one in which King Goodwill Zwelithini was firmly under his thumb; he wanted free markets and lower taxes. Thatcher was impressed with him, when they met.

Personally, too, he seemed mild enough. He was a practising Anglican, even attending synod, and therefore had only one wife. In childhood he would sleep and wake to the sound of his mother, a poet and composer, singing Zulu songs. His shelves groaned with books, especially biographies; the life of Gandhi was a favourite, and he read the Bible daily. He felt this side of him was as important as his political life. But that eclipsed everything, dividing opinion for the whole of his career.

In brief, KwaZulu was too small a stage for him; so he worked with whichever national power bloc could best advance his ambitions. At times, much as he loathed apartheid, this meant the white regime. At university he had studied “Bantu administration”, the running of the ten nominally independent homelands set up under apartheid, and his first job was as a clerk in the KwaZulu office of Bantu affairs. He played along with the system. He refused, however, to see his Zulu homeland as a separate place, cut off from the rest of South Africa. Zulus were the largest ethnic group in the country, and a strong South Africa would be one in which all the groups united—preferably under him.

For that to happen, he had to reckon with the ANC. Until 1979 they had a fragile alliance, before the Marxist element made him back away. He argued that Nelson Mandela, as a relative moderate, should be freed from jail, and later tried to take the whole credit for that. Yet he also asked the white regime to train black special forces to deal with communist “terrorists”, otherwise the ANC and their allies, in the townships. Those troops, the Caprivi 200, did the job with gruesome thoroughness. In all, between 1986 and 1996, around 20,000 people were killed by one side or the other. Assegais featured, as well as knives and bullets. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission blamed militants aligned to the IFP for the worst of it; but Mr Buthelezi absolutely rejected that, even getting the commission to tone down its report. The ANC, he always said, stirred up most of the trouble.

After the transition to democracy, rapprochement was rocky. For a long, long time he resisted taking part in the 1994 elections, eventually agreeing so close to polling day that his photo had to be stuck to the voting slips. The ANC won two-thirds of the vote; Mandela became South Africa’s first black president; he himself got the ministry of home affairs, a job he did not care much about in an office that grew famous for corruption.

At times, when Mandela went abroad, he became the acting ruler of South Africa. In truth, though, his power was fading. After the 2004 election he left the coalition and went into opposition, his more natural place; in the 2014 election the IFP won only around 10% of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal and a mere 2.4% nationwide. Back home he remained traditional prime minister to the royal family, since that role was for life; but the king had now largely wriggled free of his influence. Mr Buthelezi spent much of his time curating his reputation, relying heavily on the IFP-owned Ilanga lase Natal, the oldest Zulu newspaper, to pay him due respect.

At his Anglican funeral in Ulundi, the former Zulu capital, the roads were lined with mourners in warrior headbands, carrying cowhide shields. They also carried ceremonial canes and knobkerries; but there were few assegais in sight. ■