The historic leader of South Africa’s Inkatha Party and respected Zulu figure, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, died this Saturday at the age of 95, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced.
“It is with deep sadness that I announce the death of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, traditional Prime Minister of the King and the Zulu Nation, founder and President Emeritus of the Inkatha Party,” Ramaphosa said in a statement quoted by French agency AFP.
Ramaphosa praised a “formidable leader who played an important role in South Africa’s history for seven decades”.
Born in August 1928 into the Zulu royal family, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi for many years embodied the proud fighting spirit of the country’s largest ethnic group.
Initially a member of the historic ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), he founded the nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in 1975, initially conceived as a Zulu cultural organization.
The rivalry between the two parties was bloody, with Inkatha instigating most of the violence before the first multiracial elections in 1994.
Source: DN
