Inkatha Can’t Keep Moving the Goalposts : South Africa: It is clear that Buthelezi won’t negotiate to allow peaceful elections.

The conventional wisdom is still that Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and his Inkatha Freedom Party are crucial to the success of South Africa’s first all-race elections April 26-28. Unfortunately, Buthelezi seems to care not about negotiating but about having his demands for a guaranteed and oversized share of power fully met. Many of his supporters are sensing this and backing away.

International mediation to quell violence that threatens the balloting collapsed Thursday after Buthelezi demanded a delay in the voting. A few days earlier, the intransigent chief was part of failed negotiations with President Frederik W.deKlerk, president-in-waiting Nelson Mandela and Zulu monarch King Goodwill Zwelithini on the elections and the future role of the Zulu monarchy. The more the government and the African National Congress try to accommodate Buthelezi, the more intransigent he becomes and the farther away he shifts the goalposts.

Each failure to agree brings more violence between Inkatha and the ANC. This delights white right-wingers, who use such opportunities to discredit the negotiations process. Last month, more than 500 people were killed in South Africa, more than 70% of them in KwaZulu. The atrocities included the executions, with automatic weapons, of whole families, even toddlers and infants. Each massacre leaves decent people nauseated; fear and disillusionment stalk the black community. A once near-uniform enthusiasm for the elections is fading and the number of people unsure who they will vote for, or if they will vote at all, is increasing.

South Africa’s black population has paid for these elections with detentions, exile, imprisonment, death by hanging, death at the hands of the security forces, strikes, economic pain as overseas companies left South Africa and numberless other sacrifices since the struggle against apartheid and colonialism started in the 17th Century. If some areas remain so dangerous that voting cannot take place, the process itself will be discredited. This is just what the right wing wants.

Admittedly, Buthelezi has exacted some worthwhile concessions. He forced the ANC to agree to separate elections for regional and national government, which will increase the diversity of representation. He alone won the regions substantial powers. He has persistently stood up to the secret deals between the government and the ANC, which were then shamelessly shoved down the throats of other players.

But his harm has come to outweigh his good. Buthelezi is both intransigent and mercurial in his demands. His party’s links to the white right wing are hair-raising and he has refused compromise when every other political party has made concessions. He and King Zwelithini now demand a virtually independent KwaZulu. This is asking for a Zulu homeland, what Buthelezi rightfully rejected in the 1970s. He seeks increasing confrontation because he fears being humiliated by Mandela at the polls.

Unfortunately, time has run out on this game-playing. The political uncertainty, the states of emergency in Natal and KwaZulu and the continuing violence are hammering the economy. Foreign investors who a month ago were buying our stocks and securities by the bushel are now dumping them. The rand is diving against foreign currencies.

Worse still, blacks are losing confidence in the system and the fragile democratic will could collapse at the slightest provocation. Giving in to Buthelezi will make things worse, causing a backlash from the rest of the black community. It is time now for the government, the Democratic Party, the ANC, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the smaller black parties--everyone--to tell Buthelezi: “This far and no further.”