Interview: Walter Felgate
When
we first met you were a mature student at the University of Natal. How
did you get there?
I started off at Pretoria University doing medicine but then fell in
love, got married, went to Ndola in what was then Northern Rhodesia and
then returned to the South Coast of Natal with my young pregnant wife,
badly in need of a job. I ended up as a clerk on the railways selling
tickets for seven years. In my mid-twenties I became a Methodist
preacher and joined the Liberal Party. I found myself opposing the
church establishment over racial questions so I left the white
Methodist circuit and went to preach in the Indian Methodist mission
near the racecourse in Durban. Down the South Coast I built up a ski
boat business. At 28, I went to study social anthropology at Natal
University. I fell in love with the subject and went to study the
Tsongas on the Mozambique/Natal border. After a year on the South
African side of the border, De Wet Nel, the minister for Bantu
administration, prohibited me from entering any black area. I decided
that to complete my research I would have to go to the other side of
the border. In 1965 I went via Lisbon to southern Mozambique. This
brought me into headlong conflict with my professor, Eileen
Krige.
What did you fight with your
professor about?
The Tsongas were totally different people on each side of the border.
On the Mozambique side they were cash-cropping dagga on a large scale.
In order to study them properly, I participated and got quite involved
in the whole business. Hundreds of bales of dagga were being shipped to
buyers coming up from Cape Town. There was prime dagga and ordinary
dagga. It was all carefully graded. It was really a quite sophisticated
business. Eileen Krige was fascinated by it all and wanted to have the
research published but I refused because I knew that this would bring
down the wrath of the authorities on the people I’d being studying. I
won and my thesis was never published.
Didn’t it handicap your academic
career?
Well, not too badly. I was a lecturer in social anthropology at Rhodes
from 1968 to 1971. That was quite enough for me; I hated the stuffiness
of it all. I went to Joburg and worked for the Chamber of Mines and the
HSRC doing research on the “boss boys” as they were called on the
mines.
What did that involve?
I gravitated to Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) and then in order to study how
the boss boys worked (they were the key people on the mines), I worked
incognito in a compound manager’s office as a participant observer.
After this I moved to the personnel department, became director of
personnel and a consultant to the head of RTZ, Sir Val Duncan in
London. The big problem for RTZ then was the Phalaborwa mine and the
company decided to review labour practices and social responsibility
there. I set up a panel in order to do this. It consisted of Benny
Khopa from the Black People’s Convention, Beyers Naude, Mangosuthu
Buthelezi (to whom I had been introduced by Naude), Wolfgang Thomas,
Loot Douwes-Dekker and Lawrence Schlemmer. It was a fascinating group
and we devised an extremely progressive labour and welfare programme.
But in 1975 I fell out with RTZ over their policy of developing the
Rossing mine in Namibia. I argued that this would help prop up the
South African regime there. They were not willing to see that. I got a
good package from RTZ because they did not want me to disclose various
company secrets. In effect, they bought me off.
What did you do then?
I had joined the Christian Institute. It was very radical in its
general thinking but had no relations with the liberation movements; I
argued that we had to have that. Thanks to my links in Mozambique I
knew Frelimo and through it I met Oliver Tambo. I spent a lot of time
moving between Durban, Maputo and London in contact with the liberation
movement. I also moved in another triangle consisting of Naude, Tambo
and Buthelezi. Johnny Makhatini, who was then running ANC foreign
affairs, arranged a Ghanaian passport for me so that I could travel
abroad without using a South African passport.
What was your main objective in those
years?
The key thing to me was to avoid black versus black confrontation.
There were several black movements emerging — Biko’s black
consciousness movement, Motlana, the ANC, Buthelezi — any division
between them would only hinder the cause of liberation. The ANC knew
that its great weakness was that it was not organised on the ground as
Biko and Buthelezi were. It wanted to bring both Biko and Inkatha under
ANC control. Remember that Biko was caught en route to Cape Town where
he was going to meet the ANC. Tambo had pulled out of two earlier
planned meetings because to meet with Biko would be to acknowledge him
as an independent leader of great significance. The ANC were
understandably hesitant about this.
Where did Chief Buthelezi fit
in?
He wanted a similar endorsement from the ANC. There was supposed to be
a meeting between Buthelezi and Tambo in Sweden in 1978. Again Tambo
pulled out at the last minute, so Buthelezi pulled out as well. Finally
they met in London in 1979. Buthelezi was quite thrilled. His objective
was to break the myth of the heroic exiles. He was perfectly aware that
they were very human characters, not the iron-clad heroes they seemed
back home. He took tapes of his own meeting in Jabulani so they could
hear the applause to show them that he had mass support inside the
country — which, indeed, at that time he did.
At the time you said that while Biko
was alive the ANC had to remain friendly with Chief Buthelezi because
they could fear an alliance of two against one. Once Biko was dead,
they were free to have a fight with Buthelezi.
There may be some truth in that but it was more complicated really.
After Biko’s death the black consciousness movement was split all over
the place for a while but it was perfectly clear they would produce
other leaders before long. Buthelezi for his part felt that the ANC was
nothing like what it was cracked up to be.
How do you mean?
He took the view that the ANC would not survive in the shape that it
was. He thought it was basically impossible to fight an armed struggle
from abroad and was very aware that the movement had held no conference
and had no elected leadership. In effect, it was a small clique in
exile and the armed struggle was very ineffective. His basic belief was
that the white regime was extremely strong and that ultimately it would
drift towards a federal or possibly confederal solution. Black leaders
would face a situation in which their only option would be to
participate. This would make the homelands very important. Even in the
late 1980s Buthelezi thought the ANC was a hopeless cause. This was his
great historic mistake and once he turned out to be wrong, he was at a
loss. He has never fully regained the political initiative.
But isn’t this the period in which
you began to work with Chief Buthelezi?
Yes. I started working with him in 1978. I met with Tambo after the
collapse of the meeting in Sweden. Oliver gave me the choice. He said I
must help bring about the demise of Inkatha. I said that was
impossible: I was a member of the Christian Institute and I saw my duty
more as bringing the two movements together rather than working to
destroy one or the other. He interpreted my refusal to choose as not
taking his side. Until then to be loyal to Inkatha also meant being
loyal to the ANC. Thus I found myself at Buthelezi’s side. I did not
want to destroy anybody. I’d never had to choose before and I saw
myself as fully involved in the liberation struggle.
Yes, that’s right. I’d bought Ravan Press and Zenith Printers from the
Christian Institute and from 1975-77 I also published the newspaper The
Nation for Buthelezi. I had a close working relationship with him from
about 1976 on. I was working part-time until 1979 for Ravan, Zenith and
H&H publications. In 1979 we got a big publishing contract with the
KwaZulu schools. But in 1980 Oscar Dhlomo took the contract away and
gave it to some Afrikaans publishers instead. This was part of a big
falling-out I had with Inkatha in 1979-80.
What was the rest of your quarrel
about?
I had known Buthelezi as my friend and comrade since 1976. I had
written lots of speeches for him and we were on very close terms. But
gradually I found that he had become more formal, more autocratic, more
aloof and difficult. He would keep me waiting two or three hours at a
time to see him. I got very fed up with this sort of behaviour and
decided I would have no more to do with him. So I ran a book selling
business in Richards Bay until Dhlomo, who was then secretary-general
of Inkatha, persuaded me to return to the colours in 1981.
What was your job then?
I became a KwaZulu civil servant under contract as part of the chief
minister’s department. I moved to Ulundi but almost immediately I had
another big falling out with Buthelezi. The same sort of difficulties,
lots of red tape and formality. My relationship with him was never
easy.
But nonetheless you were his main
speech-writer?
Yes, and his demands were extraordinary. In the average year I would
produce between 1 million and 1.4 million words. The Chief wanted a
speech for every single appointment. Often 35 or 40 pages long. It was
only later that this was shrunk to about 12 pages. He had a lot of
appointments and that meant an awful lot of speeches. I lived in Ulundi
working night and day on speeches. It was an inhuman lifestyle even
though I engaged two other writers and had two secretaries. I never
really fitted in with Zulu society there. I never liked all the bowing
and scraping and the elaborate etiquette of it all. If you were in
favour then you would find yourself up at the top table near the Chief.
If you had done something that he did not like, then mysteriously you’d
find yourself on the bottom table all over again.
Aren’t these just the normal problems
of whites who get involved in black politics?
Yes, but at that time Buthelezi’s strategy revolved around the need
for institutional and white support. He felt he didn’t need to do much
more to get black support. In 1979-80 there were more signed up members
of Inkatha in Soweto than the ANC had ever had in the whole of South
Africa. One branch in Lindelani, near Durban, alone had 90,000 members.
Buthelezi set out to displace the ANC believing that it would fail
completely and that he would be the only one left for the National
Party government to deal with. He was really positioning himself for
that deal with the NP and did not want to push them too far. That
analysis turned out to be wrong.
From your own record of this
situation, it would appear that you were constantly having quarrels
with Chief Buthelezi – and indeed with a number of others - and that
you frequently withdrew or resigned.
Well, that would not be an adequate characterisation of my
relationship with Buthelezi. The point was that you had to have a
really strong sense of who you were to stand up to him. He is an
extremely overweening and domineering personality. Very few people can
stand up to him. Ben Ngubane is just pulp in from of him. Those who
work for him are virtually his slaves. You might think that this was
just Zulu traditionalism, that the big chief is always the big chief,
but it went much further than that. Buthelezi wants to subdue
completely those around him and I could not be subdued because he was
totally dependent on me.
Many would feel that Chief
Buthelezi’s strategy has not worked quite as badly as you say. The ANC
in KwaZulu-Natal, despite their years of struggle, were unable to
displace him.
True — though in fact the ANC did very well in KwaZulu-Natal in the
1994 election. Of course, some of them were foolish enough to believe
their own propaganda that they could win. They could never do that
given Buthelezi’s advantages, with the KwaZulu government and the
traditional structures behind him. But the IFP is crumbling now. The
spirit and the spark is no longer there. And in any case, the whole
situation has become blurred. There is now not much between the parties
on policy.
But has the struggle ever been much
about the policy?
Agreed. The struggle has really always been about the attempt to
displace a liberation movement and the inevitability of violence in
that situation. Policy has always been secondary. What matters now is
that Buthelezi had legitimacy in the 1970s and 1980s. He stood for
something real. But all that is now gone. Now the IFP is simply
Buthelezi. It will not survive him. The IFP has not delivered on its
promises in KwaZulu-Natal and for the ordinary man in the street all
this posturing about the IFP-ANC conflict has little meaning. But the
real crunch that’s coming is the battle over rural democracy. I do not
believe the IFP can prevent the election of democratic councils in the
tribal rural areas.
But is the poor delivery of the IFP
on their promises in KwaZulu-Natal any different from the poor delivery
of the ANC government in the country as a whole? And why do you say
Cheif Buthelezi lacks legitimacy? He has behind him not only all the
old traditional structures as before but the democratic legitimacy of
electoral victory in his province, plus being a cabinet minister and
frequently the acting President.
I don’t mean that form of legitimacy. What I mean is that he has lost
all the elite level confirmation of his position. He has no churches,
trade unions, newspapers or NGOs behind him in the way that they are
behind the ANC. The ANC may be equally bad on delivery but it does have
that immense following wind of support at elite level, not just in this
country but outside it. If you go to diplomatic cocktail parties now
you’ll find that Buthelezi is not even discussed any more. This
effective relegation of him is seeping down into the electorate. His
myths are no longer valid, they no longer hold water. On the ANC side,
whatever one thinks of the RDP, for example, its myths are backed up by
great legitimacy.
If you are a democrat why do you now
want to increase the strength of a party that already has over 62 per
cent of the vote?
Look, there is no prospect of any real opposition showing in 1999. The
ANC could well get two thirds of the vote. There is no point in being
interested in opposition politics at this stage. We have a very
difficult time ahead of us in this country given our population growth,
given Aids, given crime. It is very difficult to keep the economy on an
even keel and to control the situation in the country. The only hope of
controlling the situation and navigating our way through this period
lies with the ANC. In that sense, it represents the only hope for
democracy. Sure, we may go down the same road as Zimbabwe but we’ll
have to see in ten or fifteen years time whether we can tackle the
issues of democracy then. The key issues are now about controlling
society and keeping the economy on an even keel, not about achieving
the sort of democracy you would like to see.
You want to bring out a book
attacking Chief Buthelezi that will be used against him in the 1999
election. Is personal bitterness is a large part of your
grievance?
Yes, I’m fed up with having endlessly had to negotiate things at
Buthelezi’s behest and then finding all my work thrown out and no one
among my colleagues willing to say a word, even though they had agreed
with me beforehand. What you don’t appreciate sufficiently is how
deeply and bitterly angry I feel with Buthelezi. Not only for having
been so obstinate but for the way he has treated me. I have worked
back-breakingly hard for him for 20 years and at the end of that time,
you find you are discarded because you won’t toe the line. After all
the work I did I was never given the proper recognition, never allowed
to hold sway. So I would certainly rather be in the ANC now. I feel
that within that arena I can be a new factor in the situation, that I
can play a role, that I will count. I feel utterly disillusioned. I
just want to make bloody sure that there is no chance of the IFP ruling
KwaZulu-Natal after 1999. If Buthelezi wins again in 1999, then we’ll
all live in a state of siege. If he is allowed to get away with
blocking rural democracy then something dark and dreadful will have
happened. But he can’t get away with that. His walk through history is
now almost over.