Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
This week, a nation mourns. In a special Joint Sitting on Monday, South Africa’s representatives in Parliament paid tribute to Nelson Rohlihlahla Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected President.
In my own remarks, I observed that Mandela’s passing closes a chapter in our history. This chapter will be remembered as one of struggle, of freedom and of great transformation. Yet this chapter was only the preface, pointing towards the story that is yet to come.
As we continue to write the story of South Africa, I hope that Mandela’s legacy will inspire us and perhaps even return us to the right path when we begin to stray. We must remember his passion for reconciliation, his capacity for forgiveness and his bold leadership.
These are still needed in our country, perhaps more so now as we move further away from the moment of political liberation. This generation, and the next, have no personal recollection of the struggle we endured. It is part of our history, but no longer part of a shared experience.
We can therefore not assume that prejudice and disunity could never darken our door again. History has a way of repeating itself, unless its lessons are learned, assimilated and remembered. As we remember Nelson Mandela, let us remember his reasons for saying, “I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.”
Nelson Mandela gave his life to the struggle for freedom. He gave 27 years for the sake of South Africa’s political freedom, and 67 years for our freedom from the bonds of poverty, inequality, racial discrimination and disunity. He was the right man for an appointed time in history, to take South Africa across the threshold of liberation. Yet he remained humble.
I was privileged to maintain a friendship with Mandela that spanned more than six decades. We met as young men, in the fifties, when Mandela played draughts with my father-in-law at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in Eloff Street. He was a dapper young man, full of passion and promise. Over dinners in his home we discussed sports, music, family and, always, politics.
Throughout his incarceration, Mandela and I corresponded, at times through my wife, Princess Irene. His last letter to me, just before his release, expressed deep anxiety over the violence that was raging between the ANC and IFP, ignited by the ANCs Peoples War. He wanted to meet with me immediately upon his release, but for a full year was pressurised against it by ANC leaders.
The armed struggle, and Inkatha’s refusal to engage it, had driven a wedge between our organisations. Propaganda against me and Inkatha was rife and there were many attempts on my life.
When Mandela addressed the United Nations Security Council and referred to the IFP as a surrogate of the apartheid regime, I took it that the same people who had prevented him from meeting with me had drafted his remarks. It did not stop our friendship.
Much later, in April 2002, Mandela finally admitted, We have used every ammunition to destroy [Buthelezi] and we failed. He is still there. He is a formidable survivor.
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My leadership of Inkatha, and the very existence of Inkatha, opened space to question the simplified narrative of the ANC as the sole liberator of South Africa. I respected Mandela for saying at a rally in March 1991, “Belated as it might be, I wish in particular personally to thank Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the leadership of Inkatha for your contribution in helping secure my release and that of the other leaders of our movement.
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Mandela sought reconciliation. That was evident through his leadership in the first five years of democracy. When he announced his Cabinet on the 11th of May 1994, I became South Africa’s first Minister of Home Affairs under a democratic government. This was based on the electoral support received by the IFP in 1994, when more than two million South Africans voted for the IFP.
The Interim Constitution made provision for a Government of National Unity, whereby any party receiving more than 10% of the vote would participate in Cabinet. Thus I had the privilege of serving South Africa alongside President Mandela, and serving as Acting President of South Africa on more than 20 occasions.
When Mandela left the Presidency in 1999, our friendship remained intact. He and Mrs Graça Machel invited me to the wedding of Madiba’s step-daughter in Mozambique, and I spent an afternoon with him at the Nelson Mandela Foundation to celebrate my 80th birthday.
I know that the need for reconciliation still weighed heavily on his heart, as it does on mine. Unfortunately, Mandela was prevented time and time again from acting on his convictions. He was a remarkable leader, but not a sovereign, and few within the leadership of the ANC shared his commitment to reconcile with past opponents.
It would be a fitting tribute to Nelson Mandela for the unresolved issue of reconciliation with the IFP to be broached by the ANC of today. We cannot honour Madiba’s legacy without taking up his passion and adopting his mission. The liberation he fought for must encompass freedom from the wounds of the past committed not only by minority against majority, but by brother against brother.
In memory of Nelson Mandela, I pray that that is where our story will lead.
Yours in the service of our nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
