Big Men Little People by Alec Russell

Author:Alec Russell [Russell, Alec]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Africa, Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Nonfiction, Retail
Publisher: Endeavour Press Ltd.
Published: 2013-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

7 - A Very Zulu Chief

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi - The Rebirth of Traditional Leaders

The first to boo was a portly chief with a leopard-skin head dress. Sweating profusely, he cleared his throat and emitted a low growl of dissent. His neighbours in the packed public gallery of the Zulu legislative assembly chamber, an eclectic riot of patterned cotton gowns, traditional Zulu wear and grey suits, glanced down at their leader as if for reassurance that the time was right. Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the traditional prime minister of the Zulu nation, was staring ahead of him, but with the tiniest hint of a smile. The rumble turned into a roar. A matronly Zulu in a painted cotton dress jumped to her feet with an ululatory shriek. The circular hall echoed to the stamping of feet.

Utterly outmanoeuvred, the guest speaker, a bespectacled white judge, spluttered, shuffled his papers and temporarily abandoned his speech. Judge Johann Kriegler, one of South Africa's most respected liberal judges and head of the electoral commission for its first all-race vote, had come to tell the chiefs of Zululand to step into line, to bow to the will of central government. As if in a Johannesburg courtroom he wagged his finger for emphasis. He should have known better. No outsider lectures a Zulu chief on his home ground, least of all in Ulundi, the old Zulu capital, where since time immemorial nothing has happened without the say-so of the traditional leaders.

King Goodwill Zwelithini, direct descendant of Cetshwayo, whose impis humbled the British at Isandhlwana in January 1879 before finally being crushed on a plain a few miles from the chamber, sat to the right of the judge. He wore a dark Nehru suit and clutched a sceptred staff. Not a flicker of emotion passed his face, not even when a priest recalled his ancestors' deeds and prayed that he too would have 'strength, courage and wisdom ... at this time of great trial.' But he was in those days little more than a puppet. Beside him sat Buthelezi, his uncle and mentor, the Richelieu of Zulu politics. He was - of course - the model host.

'The judge is only the messenger,' Buthelezi chided the hecklers. 'If you don't like the message, don't hit the messenger.' But the crowd knew their man. They hummed their support for his every word. When the judge tried again, they drowned him out. His appeals for fair play were shouted down. His hectoring tone and loss of temper met scornful laughs.

After the meeting I bumped into Prince Vincent Zulu, one of the more thoughtful members of the Zulu royal house. He could barely control his contempt. 'He came down applying his glib Western democratic values as if we were in Cape Town or Johannesburg,' he said. 'He had no idea. This is what happens if you dare to criticize a chief.'

A newcomer to Zulu politics might have been tempted to conclude it was a classically South African black/white contretemps. The sight of the white official coming to give orders to proud tribal leaders was steeped in colonial imagery.

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