Mangosuthu Buthelezi - Meeting With Mandela and The Elections

Meeting With Mandela and The Elections

Buthelezi at first refused to participate in the first democratic South African elections in April 1994 but chose to enter at the very last minute, after a meeting held on 8 April, when Mandela and de Klerk tried to sway the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu from his dependence on Buthelezi by offering him a guarantee of special status of the Zulu monarchy after the elections. The offer was not immediately successful, but Buthelezi seemed sympathetic to the idea. The foreign mediation team led by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former British Foreign Minister Lord Carrington were pivotal in reaching a compromise, and convinced the IFP leader to give up the boycott of the elections. Buthelezi therefore signed an agreement with deKlerk and Mandela that guaranteed the ceremonial status of the Zulu king and was promised that foreign mediators would examine Inkatha's claims to more autonomy in the Zulu area. It was probably too late though, because Buthelezi was losing support fast, and as a consequence, his party only narrowly won the elections in KwaZulu-Natal. In May 1994, Buthelezi was appointed Minister of Home Affairs in the first post-Apartheid government, a position he continued to hold following the 1999 elections. He was appointed acting president a number of times during this period.

Though his appointment in the government of national unity was a kind of catharsis, the Zulu King openly lambasted Buthelezi and told many members of the ruling party that he was like Mandela because for 24 years of KwaZulu government he could not operate freely. Buthelezi countered that by saying that His Majesty should not interfere in political matters, rather the Zulu monarchy should be modelled along the same lines as the British one.