Open hostility between the leaders of South Africa’s two largest ”homelands” erupted this week with Transkei’s Major General Bantu Holomisa threatening to sue kwaZulu’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi for defamation. Holomisa took exception to remarks by Buthelezi at the lnkatha Women’s Brigade Conference last weekend. Buthelezi said the general should stop ”peddling his political arse” and challenged him to attempt a coup in Ciskei and kwaZulu.
The Transkei leader’s hands were ”already very filthy” and could not be more soiled by orchestrating a coup in kwaZulu, Buthelezi added. Holomisa replied by saying Buthelezi had an ”unfortunate knack of annoying both friend and foe alike” and had alienated ”everybody seriously engaged in the body politic of the region”. He said he would begin legal proceedings unless the kwaZulu leader made a public apology by Sunday. The extraordinary tension between the ”homeland” leaders comes exactly a year after they met in Durban for congenial talks.
The cracks in their relationship became public after Buthelezi was invited by Transkei President Tutor Ndamase to a meeting of heads of the ”independent and self-governing states”. Buthelezi turned down the invitation in a letter slamming Umtata for having taken ”the quasi-kind of independence which Pretoria offered it”. His letter demanded that the Trans¬kei reincorporate itself into South Africa before he would join the talks and indicated some irritation at Holomisa’s meeting with the ANC.
Holomisa replied by saying a meeting with Oliver Tambo was these days ”not an issue to write home about” – a special sting for Buthelezi who is still waiting for a reply to his request that Tambo meet him. This sparked a furious response by Buthelezi at the IWB rally. He said he was leader by the will of the people- ”not through the barrel of any gun and not through Pretoria”.
Holomisa has written to Buthelezi saying he read reports of the speech ”with disbelief and amazement”. He asked if Buthelezi was really concerned with the future of South Africa or whether he was ”safeguarding (his) cosy position and the purse attached to it”. He asked whether Buthelezi was anxious ”to placate some political masters so that when the wheels of true liberation start moving, your name can be proposed in conservative and reactionary circles for the posi¬tion of national leadership”. ”People will respect you,” he told Buthelezi, ”if you resign as a homeland leader and pursue the national liberation struggle from a different platform.”
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
