Gerhard Maré, a sociologist teaching at the University of Natal, Durban, is author of Brothers Born of Warrior Blood: Politics and Ethnicity in South Africa and is co-author of An Appetite For Power: Buthelezi's Inkatha and the Politics of "Loyal Resistance".

On Sunday evening, 25 September 1994, Minister of Home Affairs in the government of national unity, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, stormed into a TV studio in Durban. He and his bodyguards confronted, `disarmed', and evicted Sfiso Zulu, junior prince in the Zulu royal house, in full, if indistinct, view of TV watchers. Buthelezi then occupied the chair recently vacated by Sfiso and, while breathing heavily, was wired for sound to launch an attack on the royal spokesman (there are no spokeswomen in this `traditional' tumult). It was good television. It was good politics to have Buthelezi expose the side that was so frequently hidden from South African viewers and readers by the many sycophants in the media.

However, as so often in the past and despite the usual predictions, it is not the end of Buthelezi's political career. He apologised to `the nation' after a cabinet meeting, and immediately attacked the SA Broadcasting Corporation; his followers have demanded that Sfiso be charged for his `assassination' attempt on Buthelezi (he has since been charged with the illegal possession of a firearm) and, as before, his efficient use of documents, carefully kept and released, has shown opponents to be overhasty and inaccurate in their statements.

The studio invasion was just one event, the most public by far, in a sideshow to South Africa's political history of the last few decades. That the struggles in and around the Zulu royal house should be a minor attraction does not mean that it has not been, and is not being, fought with a great deal of sound and fury, intrigue, farce, and also tragedy. In addition it has wide implications for the type of society being constructed in the main arena.

Historians (such as Marks, Cope, Hamilton, Wright and Guy) have given us glimpses into the machinations of the politics of the Zulu monarchy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recently, during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the struggles intensified with the prize being a restored king - either as `constitutional monarch', as Buthelezi and his supporters wished, or as `executive king' with Swaziland serving as model. The latter option was desired at the time by the National Party government and elements within the royal house.

The politics of tradition

It is now history that the Buthelezi version won out, after many skirmishes during the 1970s. The king and his `traditional prime minister' (Buthelezi himself) became political siamese twins in the rhetoric of traditionalism in the Natal/KwaZulu region during the 1980s and until the elections in April this year. They fed each other the legitimacy that was essential to both for surviving into the `new' South Africa.

However, `tradition' cannot tolerate the `new' or change. In its politically frozen variant it is presented as confirmed by the `truth' of `the past' and historical events. That has been the terrain on which Buthelezi and Inkatha have operated with confidence for more than 20 years (as had the National Party with its apartheid policy of ethnic separation). For the first 17 years or so there was no opposition to this aspect of regional political mobilization and when the ANC entered the arena it did so with a similar commitment to a `true' tradition, the mirror image to what Buthelezi had to offer.

Mzala, ANC activist and intellectual in exile, a Zulu-speaker, wrote an indictment of Buthelezi in 1987 that infuriated the then-chief minister so much that the book was distributed only clandestinely in South Africa, under threat of legal action. Where Buthelezi said that he was `traditional prime minister', Mzala said that he was not (and that someone else should occupy this role). Where Buthelezi said that he was a `prince', Mzala argued that he could not claim this title (and then indicated who were the princes). Where Buthelezi interpreted Zulu history, Mzala cast doubt that the Buthelezis were even Zulus, and so on. In this way `tradition' was once more sanctified, except that the new, the ANC-approved version, was the `correct' one.

The politics of tradition, so effectively blended with modernizing class advancement by Buthelezi, has been analyzed and suitably condemned by several commentators and politicians during the years since 1970 when the KwaZulu bantustan had its origins. It comes as somewhat of a surprise, though, to find the ANC in a position remarkably similar to that of the previous government some 26 years ago. Ethnicity and `tradition', not as displayed in the `many cultures, one nation' concert after Mandela's inauguration, but as elements within the terrain of political competition, are being used by all.

More recent events in South Africa have illustrated one of the contradictions that the African National Congress' inadequate notion of `tradition' and its `broad church' approach to politics in the lead-up to the elections bequeathed to the new democracy. The most recent that brought it to the fore was an invitation issued (or not issued, depending on whom you believe in this sorry saga) to President Mandela to attend the annual Shaka Day celebrations at Stanger on the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) north coast on the 24th September.

Within the present context, as there had been during the 1970s, there are two distinct struggles, separable but not separate. The first occurs within the extensive Zulu royal house (Zulu kings have been polygamists), convoluted and filled with enough intrigue and rumour to satisfy the most ardent royalty watcher - but a struggle played out at such a distance from the lives of the millions of subjects in the province that commentators have to engage in the methods of `China watchers', speculating on every presence or absence, word said or unexpectedly unsaid.

The second is much more public, for here it is the contest for political power in the region, a contest that the Inkatha Freedom Party won during the recent elections, albeit with a healthy dose of electoral fiddling (not that the other side did not engage in sharp practice itself, but less successfully). It is probably safe to say that Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) won the elections in KZN, though not with the recorded margin of victory, through effective control of the means to deliver rural voters at the polling booths. The amakhosi or chiefs, another element within `tradition', accepted by both the ANC and Inkatha, provided the means to this end. They have remained central to the present conflict.

However, before examining the unintended continuities in the manner in which `tradition' serves in contemporary politics, let us first examine the most important recent events. As usual in South Africa, they have been moving with great speed and are still unfolding.

Inkatha's constitutional pitch

The politics of change became centred around national negotiations rather than the regional consolidation Buthelezi had, with a degree of success, waged during the 1970s and especially the 1980s. When this occurred, Buthelezi held out for certain concessions from the CODESA and Multi-Party negotiators. His party participated in the negotiating fora for much of the time but as IFP president, Buthelezi, now in his role as principal adviser or `traditional prime minister' to Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, refused to take part directly. Instead he preferred to issue threats, demands, and play the politics of brinkmanship to the extreme with tragic consequences for many ordinary people.

Buthelezi wanted three concessions. First, he demanded that the writing of the constitution should be a single process with the final document agreed upon before elections. This would strengthen his hand, untested as it was by elections, as one of the `big three' in South African politics. Second, he tried to maximize the number of federal elements in the constitution, including a provision that each federal unit be allowed to write a constitution of its own. This would strengthen his ability to maintain and extend the region that he had ruled since 1970. Third, he insisted on acknowledgement of the package of `traditional' goods that he claimed to represent. This package (under the consolidating symbolism of the king, and including chiefs, the old bantustan government as the `government of the Zulu people', chiefs, Buthelezi himself as `prime minister', and territory) would ensure undemocratic or even anti-democratic power and authority.

It is history that the IFP entered the elections mere days before 27 April. By then Buthelezi had managed to make considerable headway in each of these areas. He had some of his demands added to the set of `principles' attached to the interim constitution under which the elections took place, principles that govern the present Government of National Unity and bind the constituent assembly that will draw up the new constitution. He had achieved, along with several other parties, a measure of regional autonomy and the creation of nine provinces that had not been part of the ANC's initial position envisaging a strongly centralised state. Finally, he had ensured acceptance of the Zulu king and agreement on a `mediation process' that would follow the elections and that would spell out the powers of the monarch and, hence, the package of `tradition'. Through agreement that KZN would be a monarchy, Buthelezi, furthermore, claims that he won the `principle of asymmetry', or the right of each province to determine its own constitution, rather than have a template imposed by the central authority. This last point, by the way, was also what he had achieved against the NP government when it tried to gain acceptance of their own bantustan constitution for the KwaZulu bantustan in 1972.

In his battle for these concessions King Goodwill played a central role as legitimator of the demands made by Buthelezi, as well as occasional direct actor, such as when he made speeches `allowing' his `subjects' to boycott the elections and, most dramatically, when he claimed at the beginning of 1994 the right to secede from South Africa if his kingdom was not acknowledged. It seemed that Goodwill and Buthelezi were inseparable, and that all the efforts by the ANC in the years leading up to the elections to gain the benefits that would accrue to the Congress, of a `neutral' monarch, had failed forever. However, change presented the king and those around him with more options than before. It needed the power struggle in the royal house, against Buthelezi, and the reality that his new patron would probably be the central government, to focus his mind on these options.

Post-election patronage

The king is a major absorber of patronage (what he dispenses is largely legitimacy). King Goodwill is a very wealthy man, maintained in style through tax payer's money. He has no fewer than seven palaces, he has farms and an extensive farming operation, five wives, and is accompanied by hordes of lackeys (the author observed 13 vehicles accompanying the king on a apartment- viewing trip in Durban). The ANC has taken this extravagance on board through its acceptance of `tradition', and specifically of the Zulu kingdom. It is remarkable that within the furore around the `gravy train' the king's drain on funds has not featured once, except when Buthelezi reminded him publicly who had for all the years spent money on him.

When ANC member of parliament, and senior Zulu prince, Israel Mcwayizeni, started taking a prominent role in the post-election politics of the Zulu royal house it was clear that the battle was on. The ANC would again contest the special relationship that Buthelezi had enjoyed during the 1980s. Ironically, Mcwayizeni had also featured in the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, but then on the other side, with the NP government and in favour of `independence', opposing Buthelezi's rejection of apartheid independence and the limited role for the king in KwaZulu politics.

The `invitation' to Mandela to attend Shaka Day celebrations was the last straw in the struggle for the favour of the royal house. Buthelezi took this, quite correctly, as a slight on his claim of prime ministership - if there had been an invitation it was to have gone through his office. The attempt by the royal house to cancel the Shaka Day celebrations failed, after Mandela diplomatically agreed to cancel his appearance to avoid fanning the flames of regional confrontation further. Buthelezi spoke at and gave the go-ahead to celebrations.

Now the battle has, predictably, shifted to the other elements within the `traditional' package - most immediately the chiefs. Without the chiefs the king is isolated. Ironically it is the central government that has announced that provincial and national houses of traditional leaders will be established soon, as the constitution requires, probably due to pressure from the Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA, a body formed to support the ANC and oppose Buthelezi.

In October the KZN provincial parliament debated a Bill on Traditional Leaders and, as could be expected, it provided for the `traditional prime minister' (obviously seen to be Buthelezi) to have a seat. This would, in effect, allow Buthelezi a political position from which to consolidate power if the position as minister of home affairs becomes too problematic - there is every indication that he will be blamed for several of the intractable problems that such a position faces, such as the position of `aliens' in South Africa on which he takes a popular hard line.

The ANC members of the KZN parliament walked out, in part because the Bill undermined the powers of the king! The Bill was so speedily passed because a meeting of the overwhelming majority of chiefs in KZN supported the stance adopted by Buthelezi in the confrontation with the king. King Goodwill has since addressed a press conference criticising the Bill, but unless he can show that he has more than the support of presently-dominant elements in the royal house it appears that he will be isolated (and possibly even removed from office as not carrying the support of `his people').

Once again it is Inkatha that is being accused of attempting to contain the powers of the king - the first time was in 1972, by the NP and by arch-traditionalists; this time it is by the ANC and a similar grouping of traditionalists. Once again the accused is Buthelezi and his supporters, whose powers had themselves in large part been built on traditionalism. The struggle continues in a space where democracy does not reach, where many women are not only sidelined but continue in the subservience of their `traditional' roles, and where ethnicity continues to be the major factor of political mobilization.

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