Five years ago violence stained the historic election campaign that produced South Africa’s first black president. The vote followed months of bloodletting between militants from Nelson Mandela’s ANC and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party, led by a rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. That rivalry faded when Mandela brought Buthelezi into his administration. Now another campaign has begun. Two weeks ago Mandela announced that voters will select his replacement on June 2. Another landslide victory for the ANC will put Deputy President Thabo Mbeki in the top job. He is working to forge an alliance with Inkatha; Buthelezi is rumored to be in line for Mbeki’s current job. But now the newly formed UDM, made up mainly of ANC defectors, is playing spoiler. A poll suggests it already has won more than 9 percent of the voters–possibly enough, combined with other opposition parties, to deny the ANC the two-thirds majority it needs to govern unchecked. And that is a recipe for strife.
To the ANC, the new party represents betrayal. Its leader, Bantu Holomisa, was once among the ANC’s rising stars. Like Mandela, he is the son of a tribal chief from the wild and beautiful Transkei region. He first bucked the country’s apartheid system by rising to power through a 1987 military coup in the Transkei’s “homeland” government, then letting the banned ANC operate there. He joined the ANC himself once it was legalized, was its top vote-getter in internal elections in 1994 and joined Mandela’s cabinet. But the ANC expelled him three years ago, after he accused leading ANC members–including Mbeki–of accepting money from a gambling promoter. He founded the UDM last year, naming a white politician as his number two in an overt effort to appeal to whites.
Holomisa’s rise may have made the recent violence inevitable. Electioneering clearly is a rough game in South Africa. “People believe the only way to [debate] their political opponents is to eliminate them,” says Eldred de Klerk of the Center for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town. In January, one of Holomisa’s top aides was shot down in Natal province; 11 more people died in the aftermath. Another UDM leader was shot near Cape Town the next day. Police later arrested seven men in the case.
Who struck first? ANC officials in Nyanga say most of the local UDM followers are former members of the ANC’s “self-defense units,” vigilante groups formed during the battles with Inkatha. “They are thugs and they are dangerous,” said one ANC official, adding that he has begun carrying a pistol after learning that his name was on a UDM hit list. But Holomisa noted last week that political violence has reappeared only in the two South African provinces not controlled by the ANC: KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. “Our members are killed by people who are masquerading and parading themselves as peace champions,” he told a crowd in Nyanga.
Some opposition politicians want to bring in foreign observers and South African troops as peacekeepers during the campaign. The Mandela government insists that’s not necessary. And the violence outside Cape Town may not spread very far, if, as some observers believe, its real basis is local turf battles. Others worry that the country is riddled with such powder kegs. But township blacks in the war zone have more immediate concerns. “What are you doing here?” yelled a woman at an Army patrol in Nyanga last week. “You can’t protect us.” That hardly rates as an endorsement for a government of liberators.
title: “Campaigning For Keeps” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-03” author: “Michael Wyckoff”
Coming less than three months before national elections, the attacks were sadly reminiscent of South Africa’s first nonracial elections, five years ago. That campaign, which ended with Nelson Mandela’s election, was stained by the death of thousands in fighting between ANC militants and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha movement. Mandela has shrewdly co-opted his Zulu rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. This time the newly formed UDM, made up mainly of ANC defectors, is the spoiler. Its leader, Bantu Holomisa, is, like the retiring Mandela, the son of a tribal chief. The ANC expelled him three years ago, after he accused leading ANC members–including Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s political heir–of accepting money from a gambling promoter. Yet his popularity is rising. In all, a recipe for strife.
