Versions of resistance history in South Africa: the ANC strand in Inkatha in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

Since the 1999 elections in South Africa the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has entered into a ‘coalition’ with the African National Congress (ANC) (now described as such by both parties) at both provincial (KwaZulu‐Natal ‐ KZN) and national levels of government. Such close cooperation, albeit largely at leadership and parliamentary representative level, would have been hard to imagine even five years ago, when the IFP refused to participate in the first democratic elections unless a range of demands were met by the negotiators in the transition process. Such confrontation reflected the vicious, state‐supported, war that was waged between IFP and ANC supporters in KZN and on the east Rand, in which thousands were killed and many more turned into internal refugees.

While any steps to attain lasting peace are to be welcomed, if the past is not addressed such moves may prove to be fragile. An aspect of the past is the relationship between the ANC, as movement and as resistance symbol, and the Inkatha movement of nkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi during the 1970s and 1980s. Inkatha's perception and presentation of ‘the ANC during this period is discussed. The argument is that Inkatha leadership had the opportunity, and not only the ideological pressure, to place the movement within an ANC resistance history, that was also populist, denying class and other divisions. However, Inkatha was never able to escape its political location with the KwaZulu ethnic bantustan, and the ANC was driven to an uncompromising position through the rise of internal resistance from the late‐1970s.