Buthelezi should not be dismissed as a mere stooge during apartheid. Yet, he deserves little praise as an advocate for human rights and civil liberties.
If Mangosuthu Buthelezi had not opposed the apartheid state’s plans for an ‘independent’ Zulu kingdom, South Africa’s history would have unfolded very differently.
A new history book shows how entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in South Africa flow from the moral contradictions of the settler colonial state.