Yes, death is a mighty and universal truth. When it strikes, an array of virtues rise in mercy, compassion, memory, legacy, and love. Of every tear that we, the sorrowing mortals, shed on graves such as that awaits many of those we consider our leaders, some good might be born as some gentler aspects of our nature rise with the best of human virtues out of the experience.
In their warrior spirit, most of our leaders have, and in their unique ways as a generation, lived a life that perpetually declared, "as to what I dare, I’m a ... bird now, that has dared all manner of traps...and I’m not afeard to perch upon a scarecrow. If there’s Death hid inside of it, there is, and let him come out, and I’ll face him, and then I’ll believe in him and not afore". Yet, and this our leaders know to deny, “a person knows that he is mortal, but takes it for granted that his nation possesses a kind of eternal life”.
Notwithstanding,
death ends life; it does not end the relationship of life with the legacy that
particular life has left behind. It will always be what our leaders have done
that will determine how they stay alive in our hearts and minds even after they
have passed on. It is true that if there is one aspect of humanity politicians
would want to have control over, it is how they will be memorialised beyond
their conscious life and with all the torments that came with being
collaborators with the apartheid system, Bantustan and Black Local Authorities
leaders fought to survive as part of the lives of those that still live.
Even though your time in
this world is temporary, if you do good enough, your work, including that which
you would wish out of your legacy, will last forever. It is the choices we make
about the lives we live that ultimately determine the kinds of legacies we
leave. Some choices can be for the survival of the self at the expense of the
rest of us, and some can be about the survival of the rest at the expense of
the self. Unfortunately, the garment of destiny that binds us together is punctuated
by the exit of some amongst ourselves through death.
As
we reminisce the passing on of INkosi Buthelezi, leader of the IFP, arguably
part of a leadership cohort, in age and generation terms, that other African
greats belonged to, he is one amongst those luminaries whose tributes will
generate contestations of what legacy can we claim as a society. Yes, it is
human to be saddened by a person's passing, as we are as a society. He remains
one of the early ANC Congress League leaders who defined a generational mission
only to be accomplished in 1994 through a peaceful negotiated settlement.
He
lived and led in the times of Mwalimu Nyerere, Keneth Kaunda, Samora Machel,
King Sobhuza, Ntate Masire, Hastings Banda, Joshua Nkomo, Professor Ntsanwisi,
JB Voster, PW Botha, Oliver Tambo, FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki,
Jacob Zuma, and Cyril Ramaphosa. He was an African leader. He was a node of
leadership. The history of South Africa as part of the world cannot be written
without him as subject, object, footnote, and endnote.
The
political choices that Prince Buthelezi made as he was threading his complex
and contested legacy seemed to have positioned him in the company of the
controversial and thus 'dead', and yet alive with variants of possibility where
we least expected it. 'uMtwana' got involved in activities that put his person
in events that led to the loss of life by innocent people. In some of the
events, and evidence and accounts of the TRC attest to this, the 'amabuthos'
deployed in his name were clear that 'izitha' (enemies) were organisations
affiliated to the United Democratic Front.
He
almost had command of Ghosts about our politics, potentially one of the reasons
Mzala wrote as he saw in the many ghosts around him a Chief with a double
agenda. Buthelezi represented the ghost of the beauty that he elegantly
curated through his command of song and melody that his mother, Princess Magogo
ka Dinizulu, was known for. Brought up as one of the descendants of King
Dinizulu, he also curated the advantage of being the immediate grandson of Zulu
Royalty to craft a political career that would be definitive to the destiny of
South Africa’s political order, current, ultimate, or posterity.
As
one writer opined, his life was a long and gloomy one that gathered on us, haunted
by the ghosts of many hopes, dear remembrances, errors, and unavailing sorrows
and regrets. In him, we saw life that appeared as ghosts to manage. He
commanded a grasp of the ghost of stateliness as the Royal Prime Minister of
the Zulu Kingdom, a position crafted out of his iNdunankulu role in the Zulu
Royal Palace power architecture. The ghost of elegance as he juggled his
freedom fighter status as one of the founding members of the ANC and that of
being the best-ever Zulu nationalist to traverse our shores. The ghost of
ethnic-nationalist pride as he threaded the cultural prowess of the Zulu to be
arguably the most dominant in the socio-cultural tapestry of South Africa and
the Southern Hemisphere. With a better sophistication and legacy-minded curate,
his ghost of pride can easily make the Zulu monarch comparable to others manufactured
as the benchmark of royalty.
When
it came to arts, song, dance, and expressing himself as just a dad, brother,
grandfather, great-grandfather, and an elder in society, his ghost of frivolity
would be foregrounded to crowd out the rest. UMtwana also lived with the ghost
of wit; like his mother, as he often claimed, he had a natural aptitude for
using words and ideas quickly and inventively to create humour and seriousness
simultaneously.
Of
all the ghosts that were always with Shenge, the ghost of age worked harder to
correct the choices and errors of all other ghosts; his legacy is now
negotiating its survival out of their omnipresence. The convergence of blood,
death, worriorness, bravery, courageousness, collaborator, statesmanship,
diplomat, leader, and all other titles being piled on him, around him create a
new ghost only those that are not incumbents to the time he lived can discern
hero from villain or vice versa.
We
lived to see a Mandela who lived a life for the rest of us and many living for
themselves by tormenting the rest of us. We also lived to see leaders that
lived for the survival of their tribes or nations at the expense of those
outside the kraal or laager. In either of the situations, the title of hero can
be easily appended.
As William Shakespeare
writes, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred
with their bones". The ghosts he has been able to represent have all
been waiting for their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him
eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming to the life he was.
He was a complex leader. And because, as a nation, we are also a community
that does things together, the time for mourning is with us. CUT!!!
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