IFP president Mangosuthu Buthelezi is actively repositioning himself as a unifying statesman, rather than a standard-bearer for Zulu ethnic interests.
Answering Mail & Guardian questions this week, Buthelezi said it was important for South Africans to rise above party differences on the succession battle in the ANC and other challenges facing the country, including HIV/Aids, crime, poverty and unemployment.
However, the 77-year-old politician insisted there was no change in his political line, and that he had always been a proponent of peace and reconciliation.
Buthelezi told the M&G it was in the interests of citizens that the battle to succeed President Thabo Mbeki ”should not be a divisive issue in the ruling party”.
”It is therefore necessary for all of us to use whatever influence we have to calm that situation,” he said.
At the IFP’s national conference in Ulundi at the weekend, he warned that Inkatha members peddling the theory that Jacob Zuma was being ill-treated by his comrades because he was Zulu were ”playing with fire”.
”Africa is sick and tired of ethnic wars, as we can see in Darfur. Bandying about this kind of allegation is most dangerous for us as a country and as one South African nation. It can start an ethnic conflict that we do not need,” he said.
An impassioned Buthelezi also condemned Zuma supporters who disrupted the Centenary of SatÂÂyagraha celebrations at Kingsmead in Durban, attended by Mbeki and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying this harmed South ÂÂAfrica’s image and could undermine the status of future presidents.
In the same week, he told IFP supporters there was no place in his party for the rowdy behaviour shown by Zuma supporters who insulted Mbeki and his mother.
In June he criticised ANC MPs for failing to protect Mbeki’s dignity and warned that the current ”political cloud could result in tyranny and latent anarchy”.
”May God save and protect our republic if these are the political dynamics through which a new president will be raised to power to guide our country,” he said. ”If this pattern of behaviour is allowed, any future president, be it Mr Zuma or anyone else, will be exposed to the same forces, unless he or she crushes them under a brutal yoke of autocracy.”
Buthelezi’s new image dovetails with his efforts to reposition the IFP as a fully fledged national party, rather than just a cultural movement rooted in rural KwaZulu-Natal.
Buthelezi’s loss of two children to HIV/Aids in 1994 may have been a turning point for him. Since then, he has been a vocal campaigner in the fight against the epidemic.
His grief was highlighted in a letter he wrote to the Sunday Times’s ”Everyone knows someone” campaign: ”It is, of course, every parent’s worst fear to outlive their children. It is a violation of the natural rhythm of life. The deaths of our two children, Nelisuzulu and Mandisi, from HIV/Aids within a few months of each other in 2004 left Irene, my children and me numb with grief.
”Yet, we knew that this was not a singular time of bereavement. We were going through what millions of South Africans are experiencing.”
This week he said he would ”never cease to campaign against the myth of ‘virgin cure’, for education and empowerment of women, for improvement of court procedures for rape victims, and for assistance to orphans and child-headed households”.
Buthelezi protested against interpretations of his recent statements and conduct as a sign that he was a changed man. ”I have espoused the message of peace and reconciliation since the apartheid era. It would therefore be ignorant for anyone who evaluates the history of my public life not to know that I have harboured my views on peace, prosperity and poverty alleviation for several decades.
”The fact that they are, all too often, swept under the carpet does not mean that they have not existed or that they are something new.”