Secret details of the land deal that brought the IFP into the 94 poll
A sweetheart deal. This is how the Ingonyama Trust has been repeatedly described: millions of hectares of land in return for the Inkatha Freedom Party not boycotting the 1994 elections. Now, in an exclusive story, Hilary Lynd uncovers the secret details of the controversial agreement. From secret meetings on airport runways to the KwaZulu legislature, she charts the creation of the trust. This comes as yet another government report questions whether there is a need for the body
How did 2.8-million hectares administered by the KwaZulu homeland end up in a trust with the Zulu king as its trustee?
The land administered by the other nine homelands, the building blocks of apartheid, came under the authority of the national government. How did KwaZulu manage to preserve what the other homelands lost?
The answer takes us back 25 years to the final days before the first democratic election.
Many have long suspected that the Ingonyama Trust was central to the last-minute decision of the IFP to join the 1994 election, but lack of concrete evidence — and threatened lawsuits — have made it difficult to convert suspicion into fact. New archival research and extensive interviews have now made that possible.
A major sticking point in negotiations from 1990 to 1994 was the future of those who had enjoyed power and privilege under the old system. This was especially challenging in the homelands. One purpose of the homelands had been to create a social grouping with something to lose. Ending apartheid had to mean dissolving the homelands, but how would the beneficiaries be convinced to participate in dismantling their own power bases?
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Chief minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, King Goodwill Zwelithini, and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)were threatening to boycott elections as they had the constitutional negotiations. The king proclaimed the “sovereignty” of the Zulu kingdom and fears grew that a secessionist war was brewing. These fears built on the stream of information emerging about hit squads within the KwaZulu police, co-operation with the security services of the white government, stockpiling of weapons, and paramilitary training at Mlaba camp.
Negotiators had to deal with intertwined monarchist and federalist commitments within the IFP. One, represented by the king, emphasised the continuity of the Zulu monarchy dating back to a precolonial era. The other, pushed especially by Buthelezi’s Italian-American libertarian adviser, Mario Ambrosini, pursued maximum devolution of powers from national to regional levels. Both offered a basis for preserving the authority of the KwaZulu government and the IFP, its ruling party, into a post-apartheid order.
Every major party had leaders more and less inclined towards compromise. But, by early April, the hardliners had the upper hand. The IFP showed no signs of backing down from its confrontational stance. In an interview later in 1994, Buthelezi reminded Patti Waldmeir: “I was not threatening, I intended. I was not going to participate [in the election].”
Archived records of IFP-NP bilateral meetings and interviews done at the time by Waldmeir and Padraig O’Malley indicate that some within the ANC and NP had lost patience. Among them were Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer, the respective heads of the ANC and NP negotiating teams. They became convinced that the IFP would stay out, elections would proceed, and Buthelezi’s base would disappear in the new South Africa.
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