Isolate This Dangerous Spoiler

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi is a hard man to please. Maybe it’s time for South African President Frederik W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, to stop trying.

These days nothing seems to appease the exceedingly difficult Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party. Not a private visit on Saturday with De Klerk. Nor a high-profile session with Mandela. Even the concessions that Buthelezi sought a year ago and recently won from De Klerk and Mandela, to guarantee greater independence for regional leaders like himself in South Africa’s future, no longer seem to satisfy him. What’s left to give?

On April 26-28 the country will hold its first elections in which all racial groups can vote. This should be the proudest moment in South Africa’s history. Instead, with people like Buthelezi trying to play the spoiler, it could prove to be one of the bloodiest.

The Zulu chief’s stubbornness would be bad enough if it simply amounted to obstructionism, but the effect is much worse than that: His anti-ANC rhetoric is calculated to inspire violence. The latest blood bath, on Monday, involved yet another clash between armed supporters of Inkatha and the more dominant ANC. It left 16 dead and 50 wounded in Johannesburg. The ANC, aided by South African police officers, opened fire to protect its headquarters from 10,000 Zulu protesters.

However deplorable the carnage, the newfound partnership between white and ANC security forces will be beneficial. Mandela seems to be leaning precisely toward such cooperation, despite black worries because of past white support of Buthelezi’s forces. But publicity about that support has cost Buthelezi the respect of many Zulus, and this fact provides Mandela with a further opportunity.

Polls indicate that among Zulus, the largest tribal group, Buthelezi can count on the solid support of only 25% at most. In fact, most younger, more educated Zulu men and women who have left their rural homeland for jobs in the cities appear to be firmly in the Mandela camp.

Buthelezi may never support a government that he does not control. That is his choice. But in ways that perhaps not even he understands, he is a relic of apartheid. South Africa must move forward without him; De Klerk and Mandela need to work together to isolate him.