Zulu spurns Botha

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 10

Zulu spurns Botha

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg A Zulu chief, Mangosutho Buthelezi, has spurned a multiracial advisory council proposed by the South African President, Mr Pieter Botha, dealing a serious blow to the latter’s credibility as a reformer.

Chief Buthelezi said Mr Botha’s “outburst” on Friday — in which he reprimanded his Foreign Minister, Mr Roelof Botha, for suggesting the country might some day have a black President — had made it impossible for him to even ask his followers whether he should join the proposed National Advisory Council.

South Africa’s main black-led trade union federation has announced plans for an international publicity campaign to

counter violence that it alleges Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement is directing against it. Leaders of the newly formed Congress of South African Trade Unions told a news conference that its executive in Natal, power base of Chief Buthelezi, was “particularly disturbed at the level of violence that has been perpetrated against our leadership.” Chief Buthelezi, who is often praised as a moderate by South Africa’s ruling whites, said yesterday that any favourable impression Mr Botha had created in an opening speech to Parliament on January 31 had been cancelled out by his recent anti-reform "outbursts.”

Political analysts said the dispute had destroyed Mr Botha’s credibility as a reformer and it would be

“political death” for any black leader to join the proposed advisory council.

In his speech to Parliament Mr Botha said apartheid race ideology was outdated, pledged reform of discriminatory laws, and offered the council which he would chair, and where black leaders could advise him.

On Friday, Mr Botha publicly condemned Roelof Botha for saying it was “possibly unavoidable” that a black might one day be President of South Africa.

A Cape Town University politics professor, David Welsh, said, “P. W. Botha’s credibility as a reformer has been destroyed. How can any tough-minded leader like Buthelezi come in (to the council) under these circumstances?”