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Mourners -- some dressed in traditional Zulu outfits made of
leopard and other animal skins and holding shields crafted from
cow hides -- gathered at a stadium in the town of Ulundi, where
they danced, sang and cheered ahead of the service.
South African media reported that two giraffes and six impalas
had been slaughtered and skinned as part of the ritual
preparations.
Buthelezi, the founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) who
served two terms as Minister of Home Affairs in the
post-apartheid government after reconciling with his governing
African National Congress (ANC) rival, had undergone a procedure
for back pain in July and was later readmitted to hospital when
it did not subside.
He founded the IFP in 1975 and it become the dominant force in
what is now KwaZulu-Natal province.
Like the ANC, he was critical of white minority rule, which had
relegated Zulus and other Black South Africans to downsized
'homelands'.
But his Zulu nationalist movement became entangled in bloody
conflicts with the ANC in the 1980s and 1990s. The ANC was
dominated by members of the rival Xhosa nation, and its leaders
saw Buthelezi's on-off willingness to work with the apartheid
authorities as a betrayal of all Black South Africans.
The two parties made peace when Buthelezi decided to participate
in South Africa's 1994 election, the first national poll since
the end of white minority rule, which brought Nelson Mandela to
power.
By then some 20,000 people had been killed and hundreds of
thousands fled their homes in fighting between Buthelezi's
supporters and those of the ANC, as a result of which critics
dubbed Buthelezi a war lord. He stepped down as IFP leader in
2019.
(Reporting by Siyabonga Sishi; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by
Mike Harrison)
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