Zulu Chief Rejects Bid to Meet With Mandela

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi on Tuesday declined an invitation from the African National Congress to join homeland leaders in meeting Nelson Mandela to discuss ways of ending the recent surge of black factional fighting.

The surprise decision dampened hopes of an early reconciliation between South Africa’s two main black rivals, Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and Mandela’s ANC. Much of the recent fighting, which has claimed 760 lives since Aug. 13, has been between supporters of Inkatha and the ANC.

A meeting between the two leaders and a political settlement between their parties is viewed as an important step toward ending further bloodshed in Johannesburg-area townships as well as in Inkatha’s home base of Natal province.

Buthelezi, who is chief minister of the Kwazulu homeland as well as head of Inkatha, had been invited along with other leaders of self-governing black homelands to meet Mandela at his Soweto home this Friday.

The Zulu chief has issued more than 50 public requests to meet Mandela since the ANC leader’s release from prison in February. But Buthelezi had in mind a one-on-one meeting, something the ANC has refused to arrange because of widespread animosity toward the Zulu chief among its members.

Buthelezi told reporters in Geneva, where he is attending an economic conference, that he declined the invitation because “it’s not the kind of meeting that can contribute to defusing the violence. The meeting must be between leaders whose followers are involved in the violence.”

In a statement, the ANC expressed its “sincere regret” that Buthelezi had decided not to attend. However, the ANC said it would do everything possible to ensure that efforts to end the violence continue. It added that it would maintain a dialogue recently initiated between other ANC and Inkatha leaders.

Three years of internecine warfare in Natal between Zulu supporters of Inkatha and Zulu supporters of the ANC has claimed nearly 4,000 lives.

Buthelezi had previously expressed reservations about attending the meeting because he had been invited in his capacity as a homeland leader, rather than as head of the 1.8-million-member Inkatha Party.

The invitation to leaders of the five other black homelands, which are not directly involved in the recent fighting, was an indication that the meeting was not intended to seriously discuss ways of ending the violence, he said.

Buthelezi broke with the ANC in the mid-1970s. Although he consistently pressured the government to release Mandela, Buthelezi angered many ANC members by agreeing to participate in the government’s homeland system and then campaigning internationally against the ANC’s support for economic sanctions and guerrilla war.