Shot dead at a taxi rank this week, James Zulu is more likely to be remembered as an Inkatha warlord than the great leader he could have been, writes Jesper Strudsholm
The South Coast Herald once branded James Zulu “a warlord”. Zulu threatened to take the editor to court for defamation, but the paper was merely printing the public’s opinion of Zulu – a man whose death appeared long overdue when a barrage of bullets finally hit him on Monday.
The regional chair of the Inkatha Freedom Party on the KwaZulu- Natal South Coast around Port Shepstone was convicted of murder and an attack on a police station, suspected of being the brain behind more than one massacre and feared for his boiling temper.
But digging deeply enough into the life of this apparent monster, one strikes an all too common story about great leaders sucked into KwaZulu-Natal’s political violence.
Zulu was an African National Congress sympathiser, until his family was killed by young ANC supporters. He turned to the IFP as a vehicle for revenge. Later Zulu became a tool for white racists and policemen who shared his hatred of the ANC – according to people close to him – during the last 10 years of his life.
The world first heard of Zulu when, as a young teacher, he tried to establish a proper soccer field in Gamalakhe, outside Port Shepstone. Zulu had a brown belt in karate, coached others and appeared to have devoted his life to youth and sports.
But this was the late Eighties and the youth were chanting “liberation before education”. Zulu disliked this slogan and, being of royal blood, he was seen as part of the structure of traditional leaders which the ANC youth despised.
Zulu’s aunt and her daughter- in-law became the first victims in the family, necklaced at a kangaroo court. Officially for witchcraft, allegedly branded collaborators.
Zulu was next in line, but escaped thanks to his legendary oratory gifts. He then moved 300km inland.
All this was watched with increasing horror by Reverend Danny Chetty, a Black Consciousness believer, who had named his son Biko. Chetty was angered by the war – by seeing blacks killing blacks when white racists were the real enemies.
Chetty talked Zulu into coming home. Together they appeared on television as brave victors in the battle against kangaroo courts.
Six months later, Zulu’s family was murdered. Police photos show his son Bonginkosi with his throat slit and one arm chopped off. His daughter Bathobile’s bowels are in the grass next to Zulu’s wife and mother.
“When my family died, I lost control. I was confused and couldn’t think of any other way out than killing myself. But I decided to defend myself,” Zulu once told me.
Chetty felt partly responsible for the death of Zulu’s family and soon saw himself in a terrible dilemma. Port Shepstone’s best known peace worker also became one of the closest confidants of Zulu, and of many others suspected of being behind much of the violence on the South Coast.
“I hate Zulu for all he allegedly has done. But I also keep reminding myself that hadn’t it been for me, he would most probably never have got involved. If I hadn’t been so keen to get him back, his children might still be alive,” Chetty told me.
The case against the alleged murderer of Zulu’s family was dropped. Zulu then shot him through the neck and was sentenced to three years in jail. But, during his appeal, something unusual happened: the policeman who had investigated the murder of Zulu’s family appeared with the bloody pictures from the massacre and pleaded for a suspended sentence. Zulu was off the hook.
The policeman was Frederick Breedt, who commanded the so-called Yankee unit at Port Shepstone police station and was responsible for investigating political murders.
Breedt’s many enemies see his assistance for Zulu as part of a long-term friendship in which the two men used each other to fight their common enemy, the ANC.
Breedt denies that. He left the police years ago, because he “wanted to get out of politics”. He explains that he only testified because he was asked by Zulu’s defence to do so.
The prosecutor, Paul Preston, was astounded. But he only became really suspicious the next time he came across the combination of Zulu, Breedt and a murder.
Local ANC leader George Mbele was murdered by three young men two months before the 1994 election. Zulu was a suspect but had an alibi. Three IFP supporters were arrested, but Preston had to drop the case. The investigation was full of flaws.
“The case was messed up,” says Preston, who stops short of saying it was done deliberately. Fresh investigations later linked Zulu to the murder and he was facing that charge at the time of his death.
Breedt denies any tampering with the case and tells how he once got another IFP leader sentenced to death 10 times for 15 murders.
“Would I have done that if I supported the IFP?” he asks. “I gave my life to the police. And after 32 years you become a victim of a smear campaign. I’m just one of the poor guys who fell in the trap – the struggle between IFP and ANC – and got caught.”
Zulu enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the Port Shepstone police. After the killing of his family an armoured police van was constantly parked outside his home. And Zulu was given a police radio which he used to issue instructions to the police guarding him.
“I have often protected other people. But I’ve never before had to take orders from people we protected,” remembers one of the policemen who guarded him. “Zulu was so paranoid that he would scream at us over the radio, if he woke up in the night and couldn’t see our car – until we told him we were parked on the other side of the house.”
Meanwhile, the relationship between Zulu and Chetty became still more complicated.
The murdered Mbele’s wife was working at Chetty’s organisation, Practical Ministries in Port Shepstone. She refused to greet Zulu, who allegedly ordered the killing of her husband. Zulu would then complain about her to Chetty. But the reverend kept seeing Zulu right up to the day he was killed this week.
“Many have turned their back on my organisation when they saw the director shake hands with and serve tea to the man they feared most,” says Chetty, who always arranged for a guard from a security company to be present before meeting Zulu.
Most people who knew Zulu were as fascinated as Chetty by the chameleon they met.
During the day, Zulu was a school principal in suit and tie who was busy completing a university degree at Unisa. He would proudly take visitors on a tour of the small school he had built and ask that group photos be taken of the pupils – a request no one would dare to turn down.
Two years ago, Zulu finally met a policeman as tough as himself: Bushie Engelbrecht, leader of the special investigation unit which was sent to Port Shepstone after the Shobashobane massacre.
In January 1996 Engelbrecht arrested six IFP members. Zulu followed his usual procedure: he went to the police station and threatened to march on Port Shepstone with his supporters if they were not released. Engelbrecht said no.
Engelbrecht promised to meet Zulu and his men if they were searched for weapons first. The Port Shepstone police refused. Engelbrecht nevertheless saw the red-hot Zulu, who called him “a dog” and “an ANC”.
Afterwards, Zulu phoned Chetty: “You must come to Port Shepstone tomorrow. We are going to burn the town. And I want you to be present, when I die. Tomorrow you are going to bury me.”
Port Shepstone and Zulu survived. But those days in early 1996 marked a turning point in Zulu’s life, where his past started catching up with him.
Last year he was convicted of a pre-election attack on the Flagstaff police station in which his co-accused were Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members. Sentencing was postponed awaiting the outcome of Zulu’s amnesty hearing, which was set for later this month.
At his death Zulu was also charged with the murder of Mbele, the ANC leader and doctor who had assisted his wife in giving birth.
When I last met James Zulu last June he wanted to leave politics. “I regard myself as a brilliant someone when I teach. But politics are not worth it. Out of all the hard work has only come suffering,” he said.
Chetty had also become tired: “We have buried thousands of people here but keep on talking to their murderers. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been of more use to the murderers than to their victims.”
If Zulu wanted to close the chapter of violence, he couldn’t have chosen a worse profession then his last enterprise: Zulu became a taxi owner.
As the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal started dying out a couple of years back, the guns moved into the taxi industry.
And when Zulu was killed on Monday at a Port Shepstone taxi rank he had just ended a meeting as chairman of Gamalakhe Taxi Association.
This week Zulu’s death was marked by Engelbrecht, the first policeman who really stood up to him and spent long hours trying to get him behind bars.
“It’s a pity that a person with those qualities had to go in such a manner. But he was playing with fire all the time. He wasted his qualities and could have been a great leader if he had used his skills in a more positive way,” he said.