Defiant Armed Zulus March in Protest : South Africa: Buthelezi leads 10,000 carrying spears in Johannesburg despite ban on weapons.

Borrowing a page from his African National Congress foes, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi on Saturday led more than 10,000 Zulus armed with spears on a defiant march through downtown Johannesburg to protest against the white government.

Many of the protesters, supporters of Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, were clad in animal skins and some carried spears and sharpened sticks in open defiance of a police ban on the weapons.

Although a large contingent of police monitored the march, no protesters were arrested for carrying the weapons, which Buthelezi contends are “cultural weapons.” However, the authorities said they would consider filing charges against march organizers.

The anti-government march, resembling many staged by the ANC over the last three years, was unprecedented for Inkatha, which has been a strong ally of President Frederik W. de Klerk and has in the past received financial aid from the white-minority government.

Marchers walked peacefully past the downtown high-rises of the main business district, ending at the John Vorster Square police station where Buthelezi presented a petition to the government. The petition accused De Klerk of reaching agreements with Nelson Mandela’s ANC designed to sideline the Zulu nation.

Buthelezi says he and his party are the main political leaders of the country’s 7 million Zulus. But only about 2 million Zulus are members of Inkatha, and some have joined in order to secure jobs in schools, hospitals and other institutions run by Buthelezi’s Kwazulu homeland government. And tens of thousands of Zulus support the ANC.

Supporters of the ANC and Inkatha have been at war for nearly eight years in the predominantly Zulu province of Natal and, more recently, in townships surrounding Johannesburg. Nearly 8,000 blacks have been killed in township fighting since De Klerk took office three years ago.

Buthelezi’s Inkatha party has been angered by an agreement reached three weeks ago between De Klerk and Mandela.

Under that accord, the ANC, the most powerful black opposition movement, agreed to return to the negotiating table after a three-month suspension of talks. In exchange, the government promised to ban the carrying of dangerous weapons and to fence off about two dozen migrant workers’ hostels identified as central to township violence. Most of those Johannesburg-area hostels are home to Zulu workers from Natal.

A day after that agreement was signed, Buthelezi suspended his own talks with the government, demanding that the De Klerk-Mandela accord be approved by all parties in the constitutional talks. And Buthelezi has held extensive meetings in recent days with right-wing white leaders and nominally independent black homeland leaders who share his fear of ANC domination in a new government.

“We charge that President De Klerk is doing deals with the ANC to write the rules of the negotiations game,” the Inkatha petition said. “We insist on the Zulu nation’s delegation being included in future negotiations if there is any serious quest for peace.”

De Klerk has strongly denied Buthelezi’s claims that the government is conducting negotiations only with the ANC. Instead, the president said, the government is talking with all parties, including Inkatha, in hopes of restarting multi-party negotiations leading to a new constitution and voting rights for black South Africans.

In fact, the government and the ANC remain deeply divided over the future of the country, and the Sept. 26 agreement was designed primarily to get the ANC back to the negotiating table.

And De Klerk has denied Buthelezi’s claim that the government agreement to fence hostels and ban traditional weapons was aimed at the Zulu nation.