Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a seasoned South African politician, and controversial figure during the country’s apartheid liberation battle has just died, according to a statement released by the presidency on Saturday, September 9.
He had passed away at the age of 95.
The Inkatha Freedom Party founder had been in service for two terms, as the Minister of Home Affairs in the post-apartheid government after he forgave the conflict with the governing African National Congress party in 1994.
Recall that Buthelezi had in July, undergone a procedure for back pain after which he was later re-admitted to hospital when the pain did not lessen.
Buthelezi established the IFP in 1975 as a national cultural movement that eventually grew to become a political force in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province. Buthelezi’s party had been enmeshed in dangerous conflicts with the ANC between the 1980s and 1990s.
The deceased veteran’s last-minute decision to participate in the first post-apartheid election in 1994 brought peace between the two conflicting parties. The vote also brought the ANC and its leader, the great Nelson Mandela, to power.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation had meanwhile, remarked that his life had entwined at multiple points with Mandela’s, and that Buthelezi’s legacy was an “imposing and complex one”.
South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance party, (DA) had described Buthelezi as an extraordinary leader.
