Please Don’t Stand on Ceremony : For the good of South Africa, Buthelezi must compromise and meet with Mandela

The African National Congress has scheduled a summit meeting for black homeland leaders on Friday in an effort to reduce factional and ethnic violence between backers of the ANC and supporters of Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi and his Inkatha political party. Buthelezi, however, has stubbornly refused the invitation.

The Zulu chief, who is the leader of the KwaZulu homeland, refuses to be grouped with other homeland leaders. He wants to meet separately--and equally--with Nelson Mandela, who is hosting the gathering in his Soweto home after months of refusing to meet with his political rival. Buthelezi’s refusal will only jeopardize further the chances for progress.

Mandela and Buthelezi must meet to address the violence that originally pitted Zulu against Zulu in a fight for black political supremacy in the Natal province. That fighting claimed 4,000 lives in four years before spreading two months ago to the townships near Johannesburg.

Nearly 800 black men and women have been killed in the most recent wave of violence, which included battles between Zulus and other blacks. However, the killings also included random attacks with neither a political nor tribal basis that have led many black leaders to attribute to hostile whites.

The brutality gives comfort to whites who fear change. The conflict also lends credibility to the popular white view that blacks from different ethnic backgrounds simply cannot live peacefully together, a view heavily promoted by the white, minority government. The law assigning blacks to so-called independent homelands grouped on the basis of ethnicity is a prime example. The chief ministers of the homelands are state employees. Buthelezi leads the black homeland reserved for Zulus.

Buthelezi is not altogether unreasonable is his demand to meet singularly with Mandela. His Inkatha movement, now a political party, claims membership of 1.8 million Zulus, the largest ethnic group in South Africa. The ambitious Zulu chief can also argue that he has made at least 50 requests for meetings with Mandela since his release from prison. But Mandela has refused for months in accordance with ANC members who have lost family members in the bitter rivalry or who oppose giving Buthelezi equal stature.

Buthelezi certainly wants to play a major role in negotiations that lead to a new constitution. But first he must compromise and meet with Mandela and find common ground. That meeting is in the best interest of a new South Africa.