Homeland Leaders

Homeland leaders, especially Kaiser Matanzima of the Transkei, Cedric Phatudi of Lebowa, Hudson Ntsanwisi of Gazankulu, Lucas Mangope, and Gatsha Buthelezi have become major figures in South African politics despite the limited powers and poverty of their proto-states. Mangope and Buthelezi are poles apart in manner and method, but they have both learned to operate within, and to publicize, the constraints imposed on them by the South African system. Their demonstrated determination and magnetism enables them to dominate their own homelands, and so to represent the views of their peoples with force and conviction. By so doing they are able to urge the central government to narrow the gap between promise and performance. They have done so, as have other homeland leaders, by exploiting the rhetoric and logic of the policy of separate development, decrying inconsistencies, alternatively being moderate and radical and angry and restrained, and by welcoming concessions and demanding reasonable further progress.

Lucas Mangope

Chief Mangope was born in 1923 at Motswedi, north of Zeerust in the Transvaal. His father, a chief, sent him away to a school run by the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican monastic order of which Trevor Huddleston is the best known member. Mangope indeed credits Huddleston with a large measure of direct influence on his own life. In 1946, after more than a decade in schools run by the order, Mangope obtained a senior certificate (equivalent to an American high school diploma) from the community's St. Peter's School in Rosettenville (Oliver Tambo, a major ANC leader, long in exile, was a schoolmate), and then a junior teaching diploma at the Diocesan Teachers' Training College near Pietersburg. Meanwhile, he had been advancing in traditional rank, having become the leader of the Mathlatlhowa regiment of his own Tswana group. Between 1947 and 1949, he worked in the Department of Native Affairs. But in

1951, he returned to school, attending Bethel College near Lichtenburg in order to obtain his Higher Primary Teachers' Diploma. Having taught primary school in the 1940s, during most of the 1950s he taught in a secondary school in Motswedi (serving for several years as its principal) and in other secondary schools in Mafeking, Potchefstroom, and Krugersdorp.

By this time Mangope had become more heavily involved in administration and politics. When his father died in 1959, he became chief of the Motswedi-Barutshe-Boo-Manyane tribe and joined the Zeerust Regional Authority. He was appointed to the Bantu Education Advisory Board and the Advisory Council of the University of the North. When the Tswana Territorial Authority was formed in 1961, he became vice-chairman, advancing to chairman in 1968 and chief minister in 1972 with the evolution of his homeland. In these positions he steadily gained stature, employing solid, and until recently, undramatic qualities of patience and persistence in the pursuit of his own and Tswana ends. Much of his strategy has been based upon the acquisition of medium- or long-term rather than short-term results. A professed admirer of the doggedness of Afrikaners, Mangope well knows that endurance and integrity are essential if his objectives are to be achieved. Moreover Mangope, no less than other homeland leaders, knows that it will be difficult as well as essential for power to be redistributed in such a way that the economic and social development of his proto-state is least compromised.

Mangope has a significant advantage in his dealings with the Republic that is shared by few of the other homeland executives. He is fluent in Afrikaans, the language of negotiation and employment as well as the predominant foreign language for Africans of those portions of the western Transvaal and the northern Cape where most Tswana reside. As a school teacher Mangope specialized in the teaching of Afrikaans, his pupils one year even proving more proficient than all others in the Transvaal examinations. For this effort Mangope was awarded a trophy that is still a source of pride. Afrikaner journalists delight in his employment of their language and his ability to speak eloquently and knowledgeably of Afrikaner history. Sometimes, too, Mangope has praised the candor and trustworthiness of Afrikaners. He is a believer in reconciliation. He has rejected the white supremacy policies of the opposition United Party and criticized the Progressive Party (as it then was) because of its espousal of a qualified franchise.^[1] He has condemned idealistic radicals, and once collected funds from his people for the "fight against terrorists." He urged his followers to attend festivals celebrating the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Republic.

[1] The Star, 20 Oct. 1971; Die Transvaler, 6 Nov. 1972. The Progressive Party combined with the Reform Party to form the Progressive Reform Party in 1975.

Like other homeland leaders, however, he has reacted to the altered climate of opinion in South Africa. In 1973, while deploring terrorism, he warned that bargaining had to be resorted to; "time is running out" he said. Soon after the Portuguese coup of 1974, he said: "Things will never be the same again in South Africa since the events in Lisbon." Linking the "certainty" of increased terrorism along the borders with the frustration and anger of "my own people" and the increasing militancy of young blacks, he put the issue starkly. "Can he [the white man] expect us to help him defend this country — and we are more than willing to do so — without knowing what our rights are?"^[2]

However strong his criticism, Mangope's tone is always restrained. He frequently expresses an understanding of the Afrikaner predicament, even before audiences with whom it might not be particularly welcome. At an Institute of Race Relations conference he praised former Prime Minister Verwoerd's perseverance and vision: "He has brought us more years of precious time to sort things out than we are willing to give him credit for."^[3] Given this record, it is hardly surprising that until mid-1973 the Afrikaans press lauded Mangope as a supporter of separate development. It is clear, however, that Mangope's visit to the United States in 1973 exerted a profound influence on him. After his trip he came into direct conflict with Prime Minister Vorster, who had threatened to prevent white opposition parties from inviting homeland leaders to their congresses. Mangope was forthright: "I am not going to be muzzled," he said, "not even by Caesar himself."^[4]

Mangope's policies and public statements had grown increasingly critical from about mid-1972. On the occasion of the grant of self-government to Bophuthatswana in June 1972, he reminded a Tswana and Afrikaner audience that he had repeatedly affirmed his support for "the positive aspects of the policy of separate development with the emphasis on development." Under his guidance, the first annual congress of the Bophuthatswana National Party "accepted and firmly supported those aspects of separate development they regarded as positive."^[5] But in his capacity of chief minister, now able to speak to white, especially Afrikaner, audiences, Mangope has raised major questions candidly. Before an audience of white students at Stellenbosch University he called for real sacrifices on the part of whites. "If it is really our honest intention to allow the policy [of separate development] to succeed then it is surely time for the whites to make some sacrifices," he

[2] Rand Daily Mail, 13 Sept. 1973; Oggendblad (Pretoria), 29 May 1974; Star Weekly, 13 July 1974.

[3] Lucas Mangope, "The Political Future of the Homelands," South African Institute of Race Relations (Johannesburg, 1974), mimeo., 2.

[4] Hoofstad (Pretoria), 25 Sept. 1973).

[5] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 2 June 1972; Mafeking Mail, 2 March 1973.

said. "I mean real sacrifices. Of course I understand only too well that the idea of voluntary sacrifice is the most difficult thing to sell to a privileged electorate. But that does not alter in any way the hard facts of the situation which has been reached in our history."^[6] Early in 1973 he decried whites who remained unaware of the anger and bitterness that discrimination caused among blacks. After the proposed Bophuthatswana budget was drastically reduced by the Republic, he criticized separate development as such, but with a less abrasive tone. "It is my experience that most of the criticism of separate development has merit." He reminded the Department of Bantu Administration and Development that every time "Pretoria fails to fulfill the promises implicit in separate development it undermines the position of homeland leaders committed to the policy."^[7]

It is impossible to decide the extent to which the utterances of homeland politicians, particularly those statements that are addressed to Republican authorities or to sympathetic journalists, are tactical in origin. In 1973 Mangope began to question the whole political basis of separate development. He shifted his emphasis from the necessity of collaboration, and from complaints about failures to perform, to an attack on the refusal of South Africa's rulers to consider devising a workable, single political system capable of embracing all the peoples of South Africa — the major premise of separate development. "Naturally," he concluded, "I would prefer to see social and economic equality in South Africa together with one-man one-vote participation for my people in the central political system. However, this is clearly out of the question right now."^[8] "I don't think there is a better policy [than separate development] for the whites, but it is not so for the blacks. This is my opinion based on the way in which it is being carried out."^[9]

Yet Mangope has courted Afrikaners and used their institutions as possible models for Tswana. He has appealed to leading Afrikaner industrialists for their assistance in establishing for Africans a Reddingsdaadbond , an organization set up in the late 1930s to promote Afrikaners in economic life. In his assembly he said that he envisaged his Tswana university as one to be modelled on Rand Afrikaans University, an Afrikaner institution.^[10]

Mangope's recent speeches place him much closer in tone to Buthelezi, by whose example he has undoubtedly been influenced. On his return from the United States in 1973, Mangope suggested that South Africa pay

[6] Quoted in Die Vaderland (Johannesburg), 12 Oct. 1972.

[7] Quoted in The Star , 25 Jan., 27 March, and 28 March 1973; Rand Daily Mail , 29 March 1973.

[8] Quoted in The Star , 26 Jan. 1973. Reiterated in Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 5.

[9] Hoofstad , 23 Jan. 1974.

[10] Mafeking Mail , 19 April 1974.

Bophuthatswana R240 million over twenty years because its people "had never been paid adequately for their labor."^[11] In 1976, in explaining his willingness to negotiate with the South African government over independence, he repeated the demand for compensation for the Tswana people, who by the "sweat of their brows" had helped enrich South Africa.^[12] He has always justified cooperating with the Republic on the ground that separate development offers a means of gaining concessions for Africans. But the rate and magnitude of those concessions has disappointed him and he has deplored the way in which the policy has been implemented. Insisting by implication on an undivided South Africa, he has said, "In the country of our forefathers, and of our birth, the sharing of power is our inalienable right." In 1974 he protested at meddling in "matters of purely local politics" by Republican officials and reiterated his demands for substantial concessions of money and power "to ensure meaningful progress towards equal opportunity for people of all races in South Africa."^[13]

Without substantial returns, Mangope (and Buthelezi) acknowledge the impossibility of winning over younger Africans, especially students, most of whom are hostile to separate development in all its forms. In these circumstances, where the caution of the dominant power precludes substantial immediate satisfaction of the expectations of their peoples, homeland leaders must skillfully orchestrate their rhetoric and activity. This is a performance at which Mangope has become particularly adept, stating major demands in tones of studied moderation that make his rare displays of anger all the more impressive.

Gatsha Buthelezi

Buthelezi's rise from comparative obscurity to national and international prominence has been rapid. From his reluctant acceptance of the position of chief executive councillor of KwaZulu in 1971 he has become a forceful spokesman for Africans generally, and one of the most frequently quoted men in South African public life. Consequently, his genius both for the artful isolation of inconsistency and the generous search for accommodation — for ways in which to make major concessions to the anxieties of whites — has been given ample exposure in the daily press. Without that coverage he could not have so captured the imagination of many whites. As a result, he has hastened the growth of a new kind of oligarchic, multiracial politics in which leaders of all white opposition parties, except those of the far right, have held discussions with him and with other homeland leaders. His efforts have also helped to bring the leaders of the homelands together politically and to

[11] Rand Daily Mail , 13 July 1973.

[12] Ibid. , 2 Feb. 1976.

[13] Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 5; Star Weekly , 6 July 1974.

force the pace of homeland political development. In all of these endeavors Buthelezi's charisma and self-confidence have provided a critical personal ingredient.

Chief Buthelezi was born in 1928 at the Ceza Mission Hospital near Nongoma, thereafter being taken, as was customary, to the royal kraal of his uncle, Ingonyama Solomon. There he grew up with others of princely lineage, including his cousin Cyprian, a subsequent Ingonyama. One grandfather was a chief councillor to the Ingonyama Cetewayo. The other, on his maternal side, was Ingonyama Dinizulu. The young Buthelezi went to primary school in Nongoma and to Adams College, the famed American-founded mission high school in Amanzimtoti, and then to Fort Hare University College. He studied history and native administration, but never completed the course. On the occasion of a visit to the college of a governor-general, he participated in a demonstration against an intrusion by "the rubber stamp of oppression." At first suspended, Buthelezi was expelled just before his final examinations. Only later could he complete his degree, at the University of Natal. He had hoped to go on to study law, but the pressures of family obligation were strong. On the insistence of Princess Constance Magogo ka Dinizulu, his mother (who remains influential today), he returned home. In 1953, aged twenty-six, he succeeded his father as head of the 20,000-member Buthelezi clan, with its headquarters at Mahlabatini. The white authorities were so concerned about his potential for leadership and troublemaking, however, that they confirmed him as chief only after a five-year probation.

Relations between the clan under his leadership and the government of South Africa have never been cordial. Buthelezi and his people resisted the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 — not without material cost. In a bold gesture early in the next decade, they even accepted a R320,000 agricultural betterment scheme only on condition that they themselves should pay for it (at a tax of R20 per person over two years). This may have been Buthelezi's idea. There was internal opposition, however, and only R10,000 was ever collected. The promised improvements should therefore have been defaulted, but, a second time, the government offered to pay for them. This time the tribe, in a voice echoed many times more recently by Buthelezi, said haughtily that if the government were impatient it could make the improvements on its own, "but the tribe would not accept [them] of its own accord."^[14] Still later, the tribal leaders offered to implement the scheme, but only around Mahlabatini, where Buthelezi lived. There the betterment could be observed by the entire tribe. The government would not, in the end, accept this reluctant and conditional assent.

[14] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail , 19 June 1970.

Buthelezi and his followers remained obstructionist throughout the 1960s. (During the same period he was one of Ingonyama Solomon's closest advisors.) Only in 1968, after South Africa forcefully made its wishes known, did they finally agree to the establishment of a regional authority at Mahlabatini. Buthelezi became its chairman, making it widely known that he and his people, having never been consulted about the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act, were merely obeying the law. "The Buthelezi tribal authority," he said, "feels that it is not under any obligation to register any acceptance or objection to the proclamation of the regional authority for the district, as the tribal authority is already fully cooperating with the department in the implementation of the Act."^[15]

Since his expulsion from the college of Fort Hare, Buthelezi has managed to speak his mind without falling afoul of white authority. This says as much for his adroitness as it implies the government's awareness of his abilities and potential. He has tried on numerous occasions to deflect policy and to take advantage of mistakes made by officials. One of his stratagems is to make absolutely clear where power lies — as he did in the case of the regional authority at Mahlabatini, and as he did early in 1973 when he refused to discuss plans for land consolidation because his people had not been consulted about them. He is not deferential in fact-to-face contact with cabinet ministers, but he observes the courtesies of political combat. Unlike his ideological forbears, such as Chief Albert Luthuli, he is able to say much for which they were banned and detained, evidence both of the strength of his position and of a change in the political style of South Africa's rulers. But in his dealings with the government he has some serious handicaps. Unlike Mangope he speaks no Afrikaans and cannot similarly charm Afrikaners while simultaneously disagreeing with their policies; Buthelezi moves essentially among English-speaking whites and blacks hostile to separate development. He has close personal ties with members of the Progressive Reform Party and is a staunch member of the Anglican Diocesan Committee for Zululand. His multiracial prayer breakfasts extend this last dimension of Buthelezi's personality. He has criticized the United Party, and its plan for a federated South Africa — which should endear him to the government — but he has consistently excoriated all those, whoever they are, who would seek to perpetuate white supremacy in South Africa.

Buthelezi frequently replies to official pronouncements with asperity — in tones still not customarily employed by blacks when talking of and to whites. He reminds his listeners of the absence of choice for an African leader working within a system so dominated by the power of whites. He also urges progress. "When a man is reaching for the moon, we cannot be expected to move towards self-determination at oxwagon pace," an ironic use of an

[15] Quoted in ibid. , 19 June 1968; Survey of Race Relations, 1969 , 131.

Afrikaner cultural symbol. His strategy is to push incessantly, issue after issue, for the accelerated development of black interests within and without the homelands. He espouses multiracialism, professing to welcome whites in KwaZulu even if blacks remain unwelcome in the rest of South Africa. Buthelezi also has for many years preached nonviolence. "I have not deviated from my path of nonviolence" he said in 1975, "in spite of all the violence arrayed against us, as the powerless and voiceless people of this land. . . . Our people can never meet violence with violence, even if one assumes some wanted this. . . ." Yet "the whole system under which we are ruled as Blacks is structured on violence. It is a form of violence to forbid my children to go to a school of their choice because of their colour. It is a form of violence that I cannot enter the Post Office at Nongoma [through] a door reserved for Whites. . . . The influx control regulations and pass laws are a form of violence. . . . The whole colour bar system is based on violence and violence is used every day to enforce it."^[16] Nevertheless, Buthelezi's stands on these and numerous other issues are less significant politically than the ways in which he enunciates them.

Although his is not the only African voice in South Africa — separate development has raised a veritable cacophony — he is the most widely known and admired of the black leaders, not merely among his own people, but among Africans generally. Although his very use of the platform provided by the government has led to his being attacked as a "stooge" by Africans inside and outide South Africa, he has indubitably become a "national" figure, looked to not only by most Africans, but by many in all the other groups in South Africa.

It is because Buthelezi so persistently addresses himself to the problems of South Africa, as well as those of KwaZulu, that he appeals to Africans and whites outside the homelands. He has raised the morale and enhanced the pride of all Africans. What may be termed his major constituency — urban blacks of many ethnic groups and liberals of all colors — works and lives outside his homeland. Politically, this is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, but of his popularity there can be little question. After touring the towns of the Reef with Buthelezi, a leading correspondent wrote of his inordinate, charismatic appeal. "At Kagiso, Ketlehong, Duduza and Mamelodi, Africans received him with a warmth I have rarely seen accorded to any other politician in this country. . . . In Soweto . . . Chief Buthelezi was cheered by thousands."^[17]

[16] Gatsha Buthelezi, "Report Back to the Reef Africans on the Conference of Black Leaders with . . . Vorster . . . 1975," mimeo., 29; Natal Mercury , 11 May 1974.

[17] Tim Muil, Natal Mercury , 29 Oct. 1973. See also Lawrence Schlemmer and Tim J. Muil, "Social and Political Change in the African Areas: A Case Study of KwaZulu," in Leonard Thompson and Jeffrey Butler (eds.), Change in Contemporary South Africa (Berkeley, 1975), 120–121, for an opinion poll.

Buthelezi speaks with freshness on the issues of the day, frequently showing an acute sense of timing and a sense of irony welcome in tense and otherwise humorless political exchanges. Although sometimes a poor speaker, especially when reading from a prepared text, he has that dramatic attribute called presence. He is also proud and temperamental, "There are moments of brooding . . . glimpses of chilling pride, times when the cheeks are puffed out with anger or when the mouth is large with laughter, and just when you think he is all extrovert . . . you become aware that this is a very private man."^[18]