Our attention has been drawn to statements by Brigadier Coetzee, the head of the South African Security Police whose statements appeared in the Sunday Times of Johannesburg and other media to the effect that the ANC is plotting to assassinate Chief Gatsha Buthelezi of the KwaZulu bantustan. These statements follow our criticism of Chief Buthelezi for the role he is playing in helping to suppress the struggles of the workers and students against the fascist regime in South Africa.
These students are fighting against inferior education and this struggle cannot be separated from the general struggle for political and economic liberation. The workers are fighting for higher wages and better working conditions. The mass of the people are fighting against high rents, high prices, high bus fares etc., and all of these are part of the whole struggle for the liquidation of the system of racial oppression and exploitation.
At the height of these actions, which included a countrywide campaign for the release of Nelson Mandela, which involved armed actions by Umkhonto we Sizwe, Chief Buthelezi emerged on the side of the enemy against the people. He even ridiculed and attempted to undermine the campaign for the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. The African National Congress criticised him for this.
The racist regime has seized upon that criticism of Gatsha Buthelezi as a basis to sow discord among our people, naturally singling out the African National Congress and alleging that it plans to assassinate Gatsha Buthelezi. Of course the African National Congress has no intention, has no plans, does not even have a need to assassinate Buthelezi or anybody else.
Reference has been made to our statement which was made by our Secretary General Alfred Nzo on June 16th in London. Our statement is associated with these so-called threats. What did that statement say? After criticising this role of Chief Buthelezi, it said those people who place themselves in the path of the struggling masses shall inevitably be swept away together with their racist masters whom they serve. The statement went on to explain that in our region this is a lesson which has been confirmed in the recent past by the victories of FRELIMO, MPLA, and the Patriotic Front Alliance in Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe respectively. South Africa will be no exception. Indeed, the very same lesson is being confirmed in Namibia today. This is not a statement about any individual. It is a statement affirming that the enemy will be defeated with those who assist the enemy. The enemy will fail. The struggle of the people will succeed as it has succeeded in these countries and has succeeded in Namibia. That has nothing to do with assassination of Buthelezi or of anybody else.
Divide and Rule
But why is Brigadier Coetzee, the head of the Security Police in South Africa, toying with this idea of assassination? The South African regime has in the past tried desperately to divide our people by various means, especially by the creation of bantustans, by trying to separate the Coloured people from the mass of the black oppressed and exploited, by trying to set up the Indian people as a separate entity, by dividing the workers into a white privileged working class and blacks.
These attempts are being proved to be failing. We have seen this year an almost amazing level of unity of our people in action. And so it is time for the South African regime to look for a new tactic of divide and rule. This one, and for our people it is a dangerous one if we fall into this trap, is to set our people one against another and generate conditions for mutual strife among the oppressed themselves.
Chief Buthelezi happens to be hyper-sensitive to criticism. This makes him a ready instrument at the hands of the South African racists - an instrument for the achievement of their objective of transforming our struggle from being a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor into a struggle among the oppressed themselves. It is in particular an attempt to separate the people of Natal especially from the rest of the people of South Africa.
In addition, alarmed by the growing intensity of the liberation struggle as led by the ANC and its allies, the racist regime is trying fruitlessly to discredit and isolate the ANC from the people, and to discourage the international community from supporting our struggle. These attempts will fail dismally. Our people understand the tactics of divide and rule and they will continue to be united in action in the struggle for national liberation.
Question: The relation between Buthelezi and the ANC has been a sort of twisted path over the months. On the one hand Buthelezi is taking part in these attempts to divide himself, just being chief minister of KwaZulu. It makes it a difficult job for the ANC to bridge its own policies of unity while at the same time not regarding Buthelezi as a real enemy of the cause. How do you justify Buthelezi's actions at all?
TAMBO: Well, I have no way of justifying his actions at all. If we were justifying his actions we would not have read the statement that we have. There is no justification for his actions. There is no basis for it. He emerges quite clearly as a spokesman for the regime.
Question: So why wouldn't it be a good idea to do away with him?
TAMBO: No. We have had many political opponents, hundreds of them. We would not know his position unless he spoke. There may be others like him. But in our struggle, and it has been a long struggle, we have had people who have stood up and done what he is doing, opposed the struggle, criticised everything we are doing. I think you have heard them everywhere. We have even had traitors. So during the past 70 years and especially, I would say, during the period of the Nationalist Party rule, there have been many people like that. Others have formed their own organisations and many have been destroyed politically by the nature of the struggle which has developed in spite of them rather than because of them. This is our experience. We have no need to touch them.
Question: Do you think Buthelezi had destroyed himself in the eyes of the people?
TAMBO: I would be surprised if he has not. You know he is doing what others have done. If he persists in this he will finish up where others have done. This is what we are saying. Anyone is destroying himself who defends the regime by attacking children who are protesting against an educational system which has been our grievance ever since we were born and which has been worsened by "Bantu education". That grievance against education has cost us nearly a thousand young people dead, many limbs lost and thousands have left the country. Anyone who attacks those children is destroying himself. There is no doubt either that the people in Natal support the children in the struggle against racist education. Inkatha people want Nelson Mandela and other leaders released. The people of Inkatha want higher wages - they are workers participating in these strikes, in bus boycotts. They want liberation, the liberation that has come to the people of Zimbabwe. People in Natal and members of Inkatha, like everybody else in the country, want liberation, like Zimbabweans and Namibians. But as in these countries, or should I say like in our country, in Zimbabwe, Namibia and everywhere, there have been people like this and we say they will sink with the ship on which they are sailing, which is virtually sunk, the ship of racist minority rule. We don't need to touch them.
Question: Comrade President, all along it appears that Buthelezi has been one of the better so-called leaders of the bantustans. This has been proved by his outside trips when he came here and elsewhere and some presidents on this continent have spoken better of his stand. Now it seems he is abandoning you and the African cause in South Africa. What do you think is the main cause behind his divided role?
TAMBO: Those presidents would not say the same thing about him today as they have done in the past. I do not want to speculate why he is doing these things. We have ourselves encouraged him as we have encouraged everybody else, to join the forces of the struggle, to oppose bantustans, to oppose the independence of the bantustans. We are really concerned less with Gatsha Buthelezi than with the people. For a long time we have ignored statements that he has made. We have addressed ourselves to the people, we have attacked the enemy. But we do not spend our time and energies on individuals at all. Our pre-occupation is the struggle of our people against their enemy for their liberation. Occasionally we criticise individuals when they seem to be overacting, more to show them the direction than merely to indulge in polemics. The ANC is too pre-occupied with a difficult problem to spare its energies for individuals and to some extent the only reason we are bringing this matter up is because Gatsha Buthelezi is now being used for something which could be very dangerous unless we warn our people, we warn our friends, we warn our supporters, we warn the international public. But, having done that, we proceed with our struggle. I may say that there is also an attempt in South Africa, even by the press there, to transform our struggle into a quarrel between this and that individual. They are always doing this. The ANC does not like being involved in this business and we can expect more to be said by Gatsha Buthelezi to which we will turn a deaf ear as we have done to attacks on the ANC from all sources. It is on that basis that we have built the current unity of our people which now exists in the country; in spite of their different political tendencies and mutual differences, they are united in this struggle against the South African racists. 1From: ANC Weekly News Briefings, London, July 25, 1980