Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi

Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was born in Mahlabatini into the Zulu royal family, the great-grandson of King Cetshwayo. He studied at the University of Fort Hare, joining the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League alongside Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo before being expelled for student activism.

In 1975, Buthelezi founded the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and led the KwaZulu bantustan throughout the apartheid era, rejecting armed struggle in favor of free-market constitutional federalism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, bloody political rivalry between Inkatha and the ANC claimed thousands of lives in KwaZulu-Natal and the townships of Gauteng. Following last-minute negotiations, Buthelezi participated in the historic 1994 non-racial elections and served as Minister of Home Affairs in Nelson Mandela's Government of National Unity for a decade, often acting as South Africa's president when Mandela and Thabo Mbeki were abroad.