OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 9.30am.
THEMBA Khoza, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party in Gauteng and a member of parliament, is as controversial in life as in death.
The fiery politician, was suspected of inciting violence between rival black groupings before the fall of apartheid, died on Sunday.
But the nature of his undisclosed illness and the 19 criminal charges pending against him when he died in the Glynwood hospital in Benoni, outside Johannesburg.
One newspaper reported that Khoza had died of Aids, quoting a source in the IFP, while others have headlined that his death was “shrouded in mystery” because as the party was “refusing to disclose the nature of his illness”.
Khoza, a former bank clerk, began his rise to notoriety when he became the youth leader of the IFP in the 1980s.
He was branded a warlord for his alleged involvement in so-called black-on-black violence in Johannesburg’s townships between supporters of the IFP and the now-ruling African National Congress in the early 1990s, also the time when he was elected leader of the party in the Gauteng area.
The charges against him included gun-running, inciting violence and attempted murder, the latter stemming from the death of two ANC members in 1990.
But the ANC, which has under President Thabo Mbeki adopted a conciliatory approach to the IFP, on Sunday joined the IFP in mourning the 41-year-old politician’s death.
An ANC spokesman said the party regretted losing Khoza at a time when it was trying to cement peace with the Zulu-nationalist IFP in KwaZulu-Natal — where bloody feuding between the parties claimed more than 12000 lives between 1985 and 1998.
The IFP credited Khoza for trying to bring an end to the violence in later years.
IFP spokesman Reverend Musa Zondi said despite the allegations against him, Khoza was “a soft man” who would never have opted for violence under normal circumstances.
Khoza was elected to parliament after the first democratic elections in 1994 and was re-elected in the June 1999, but was excused from his parliamentary duties in April because of his illness. — AFP