Profile : Prince of a Troubled Black Kingdom : Buthelezi of the Zulus is adored by his subjects, despised by his rivals. No one in South Africa dares ignore him.

The portrait of a bearded African prince in wire-rimmed glasses occupies an honored position in tens of thousands of shacks on the storied, sodden hills of Zululand.

It’s very humbling, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi says, that his subjects love him so. And not only his subjects.

An American admirer sculpted a bust of the prince recently and brought it here, half a world away, to personally unveil it for Buthelezi.

Buthelezi beamed with pride. “See,” he told a reporter. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. I have many friends in America.”

Plenty of people around the world adore Buthelezi, regarding him as a moderating voice of reason among blacks in this troubled country.

Plenty of others, including his rivals in the recently unbanned African National Congress, hate him passionately, considering him a power-hungry tool of white oppression and an instigator of a bloody civil war.

But no one in South Africa dares ignore him.

As the chief minister of the Kwazulu homeland and head of Inkatha, a political movement with 1.7 million paid members, Buthelezi will be an important player in black-white negotiations for South Africa’s future.

“I don’t think he will ever be irrelevant in South Africa,” said Lawrence Schlemmer, director of the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg. “He has one of the most cohesive organizations, and that gives him a political foundation for the future.”

Or, as Frederik van zyl Slabbert, a former liberal member of Parliament with close ties to the African National Congress, puts it: “Gatsha is a shrewd political operator.”

For now, Buthelezi waits in the wings while President Frederik W. de Klerk, leader of the white minority government, and the ANC, the primary liberation movement, try to resolve the ANC’s objections to formal negotiations.

The government and the ANC agree that Buthelezi will occupy a seat at the table when negotiations do begin. What no one knows is on what side he will sit, which is fine with him.

“All the parties are finally gravitating to where I am,” he said in an interview. “I’ve always stood for negotiations and peaceful change.”

Although Nelson Mandela’s ANC and Buthelezi’s Inkatha share a belief that apartheid must end, they have long differed over how to achieve that. Now they envision two very different South Africas: Buthelezi wants a free-enterprise economy while the ANC argues for nationalizing major industries.

Buthelezi oversees his kingdom from the corner of Prince Mangosuthu and King Dinuzulu Streets in Ulundi, atop the battlefield where British colonialists avenged an embarrassing military defeat at the hands of the Zulus by routing the Africans, exiling the Zulu king and ending the Zulus’ mighty military tradition.

That was 111 years ago. Today. the modern Kwazulu legislative building juts from the scrubby landscape. Down the street is a small, new Holiday Inn and a shopping center. Signs are posted in Zulu and English, but Zulu is the language of choice. Afrikaans, which along with English is one of the two official languages of South Africa, is as rare in the Zulus’ land as are white faces.

Buthelezi works in a windowless conference room here, plotting his public relations efforts and travel schedule by telephone with a consultant in Johannesburg and spending free moments responding, in longhand, to letters from friends as well as strangers.

“I write letters about things that should not even come to my desk,” he said, showing a calloused finger as proof of his labors. “I enjoy it because I really believe I am serving my people.”

Access to Buthelezi’s inner sanctum is guarded by three security checkpoints. But the chief minister ignores the cordon as he stalks the halls, striding past the messengers and guards who, hands folded, bow solemnly in his wake.

Buthelezi, the father of seven children by Princess Irene, is a complex man, living behind many faces. Brooding and impatient one minute, he is all charm the next.

A youthful-looking 61, he seems as comfortable in Saville Row suits mingling with captains of industry as he is in traditional Zulu dress delivering fiery speeches at political rallies.

Although he exudes an air of easy self-confidence, Buthelezi moans that he gets no respect from the media or his political rivals. He desperately seeks recognition as a legitimate anti-apartheid leader and seems hurt by the world figures who have, under pressure from the ANC, refused to meet him.

A hefty publicity packet from Buthelezi’s office attempts to shore up his anti-apartheid credentials by including a 1988 speech in which former President Pieter W. Botha criticized the chief minister for “refusing to negotiate with the government.” Buthelezi has underlined those last six words.

Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda, a patron of the ANC, recently received the chief minister “with the dignity I deserve as a son of Africa,” Buthelezi said, adding, “I can show you the album.”

No criticism, from whatever quarter, is too small to prompt a larger, acidly worded counterattack from Chief Buthelezi.

A few years ago, Buthelezi sued a small South African magazine for an article describing him as “nauseatingly pompous and self-important” and questioning whether he practiced the nonviolence that he preached. Buthelezi spent seven hours on the witness stand defending his character to win a $4,800 judgment.

The ANC and Buthelezi harbor deep, often intensely personal feelings of distrust for each other; and since 1986, more than 2,500 blacks have died in fighting between their supporters on Buthelezi’s home ground of Natal province.

What began as a power struggle between Inkatha and the ANC-aligned United Democratic Front has become a blood feud. Families are pitted against families in a cycle of revenge that has come to transcend politics.

Both Inkatha and the ANC have pleaded for an end to the violence, but each side doubts the other’s sincerity. The ANC says Inkatha’s warlords include members of Buthelezi’s inner circle and are supported by the police. Inkatha contends that the ANC is fueling the flames by refusing to renounce its commitment to the armed liberation struggle.

Buthelezi was born not far from here, the son of a Zulu chief and the 10th of his 20 wives. His mother, a princess, was the descendant of a heralded line of warriors, including the founder of the Zulu nation, King Shaka.

“Those who say I espouse nonviolence because I’m afraid are mistaken,” Buthelezi said recently. “Warrior blood courses through my veins.”

He grew up in the royal palace of his mother’s family and went to Fort Hare University, the training college for generations of black leaders in southern Africa. He was expelled after two years for joining anti-apartheid protests and completed a degree in history at the University of Natal, becoming the first Zulu chief to graduate from college.

Early on, Prince Mangosuthu showed signs of political percipience, from his journeys on horseback into distant rural villages to his remarkable memory for names.

“Somehow, God gave me this gift of remembering many people,” he said. “I remember my mother would see me greeting people in the shops, and she’d laugh and say I was amazing.”

A former member of the ANC and nephew of its founder, Buthelezi split with the organization in the mid-1970s over both the ANC’s bombing campaign and its call for international sanctions against South Africa. Buthelezi argued that the only road to peace was through negotiations, and he angered ANC leaders by pleading with foreign governments to end sanctions.

The ANC has accused him of selling out for agreeing to serve as chief minister of Kwazulu, one of 10 black “homelands” Pretoria created more than a decade ago in an unsuccessful attempt to allow blacks to govern themselves but deny them citizenship in white South Africa.

Buthelezi contends that Kwazulu, as the ancestral home of about 7 million Zulus, is different from the other homelands because “the Zulus were a nation long ago. My leadership was not created by homelands policy.”

Buthelezi has not been a very good friend of the white government. He rebuffed attempts to persuade homeland leaders to choose independence, and Kwazulu is one of six self-governing homelands that remain officially part of South Africa.

And in recent years Buthelezi refused to negotiate with the government until it released Mandela and other black political leaders from prison.

Buthelezi and Mandela, a chief in the Xhosa tribe, have known each other for years, and the two exchanged letters during Mandela’s 27 years in prison. Their relationship had been seen as a potential bridge between their warring supporters, but the two have not met since Mandela’s release.

When Mandela publicly agreed to meet the chief minister recently, ANC leaders “almost throttled me,” Mandela admitted, and he was forced to cancel. The ANC worried that Mandela would lose credibility among his young comrades, who consider Buthelezi an instrument of the apartheid system.

“It’s very painful to me that other people should try and interfere with our relationship, which is quite separate from politics,” Buthelezi said. “Really, honestly, I do love him. Even now.”

Buthelezi’s cabinet meeting room is ringed with photographs of the chief minister and dozens of world leaders, including three American Presidents. But Buthelezi seems to relish his tribal duties as much as his world travel.

“When I see some of my (African) brothers in exile, I really sympathize with them,” he said, “because I couldn’t survive that way. I think I thrive on the smell of my people. If I couldn’t smell them, I think I would die.”

Biography

Name: Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi

Title: Chief minister, Kwazulu Legislative Assembly; president of Inkatha, the Zulu political movement.

Age: 61

Family: Married to Princess Irene Audrey Thandekile Mzila; three sons, four daughters.

Education: Degree in history from University of Natal; first Zulu chieftain to graduate from college.

Quote: “People question me, they say, ‘Don’t you believe in black majority rule?’ I believe in majority rule, of course, but if you say black, then that creates a problem for me. Majority rule, yes, but based on shared ideas and not on color.”