Word: kwazulu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Transkei's independence is a meaningless one, since the new state will be unable to break out of this pattern of exploitation. Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of the Kwazulu homeland and one of the most outspoken homeland chiefs, has said, "I challenge anyone to prove to me that the majority of blacks do in fact want the so-called independence which is offered to our Reserves, now called 'homelands'...The majority of the black people do not want to abandon their birth right. They have toiled for generations to create the wealth of South Africa. They intend to participate...
...Transkei is lucky, in a way, because it is divided into only two parts. The homeland of Boputha Tswana consists of 19 scattered parcels of land, though these will eventually be consolidated into six pieces. The Zulu homeland of KwaZulu was originally in 188 parcels, is now in 29, and will ultimately be consolidated to ten. Scoffs Buthelezi, who is also the Chief Minister of KwaZulu: "A state in ten separate pieces? The very notion is nonsensical." Buthelezi has flatly refused independence for KwaZulu, explaining: "It is meaningless political freedom combined with effective economic slavery." Adds Hudson Ntsanwisi, Chief Minister...
Today the 5 million Zulus are still the largest tribe in South Africa. Half live and farm in the fertile hills and valleys of KwaZulu, the designated "homeland" that forms a patchwork quilt of territory from the Mozambique border in the north to southern Natal and the Transkei in the south. There they live much in the tribal style of old, in beehive-shaped mud and thatch huts, sharing the kraal with their cattle. The other half work in the "white man's" South Africa, living in bedroom ghettos like Soweto. They are frequently favored for positions of trust...
Their poetry often flares with a sense of lost grandeur, as in Oswald Mtshali's lines about King Shaka: "Lo. You can kill me/ But you will never rule this land." That proud defiance is perhaps best epitomized today by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, chief minister of the KwaZulu territorial government. Buthelezi, 49, is relentless in his condemnation of white supremacy. He has insisted that his government will not take an oath of allegiance to the South African government. In that resistance, he believes, the tribe is fighting the last Zulu...