Call to Zulu warriors an incitement to violence, ruling party

Political tensions heightened this week in South Africa's volatile province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), following threats that the provincial premier would be charged with incitement to violence. This followed a statement attributed to the KZN Premier Lionel Mtshali which called for Zulu warriors "in traditional gear carrying everything that comes with it, even the shining objects" to demonstrate at next week's opening of the provincial legislature. The "shining objects" being an apparent reference to traditional assegai or spears carried by warriors in full regalia. The African National Congress (ANC) has described the call as "a recipe for disastrous bloodshed", news reports said. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) governs the province, while the ANC is the ruling party in the country. South African newspaper Business Day reported on Wednesday that ANC provincial chairperson S'bu Ndebele had threatened to lay a charge of incitement to violence against Mtshali. The premier, however, has since said his remarks were misinterpreted. The current row is centred around the IFP's demand that the provincial legislature remain in its traditional stronghold of Ulundi. However, the ANC and the opposition Democratic Alliance had out-voted the IFP and opted instead for Pietermaritzburg, the seat of the apartheid-era Natal provincial legislature when KwaZulu was still a so-called homeland or Bantustan ruled by the IFP. KZN has a history of political violence, especially during the early 1990's, and a return to those dark days would have serious implications for the entire country. But Paul Graham, executive director of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), believes the political "hot air" will not translate into community level violence between ANC and IFP supporters. "Not only is it the old issue of the capital but also, rather drearily, like the old set of accusations and counter defences [such as] the premier has made - that his statement was not a call to violence etc," he said. While the current row was indicative of "serious problems at a political level in the province", there was no sense that this was manifested at "a community level yet". The political sparring was also less evident at the level of national politics, he noted. "If one has to think back, in a sense it's really the concurrence of problems at all three levels which allowed the violence to spiral out of control in the past. "So while it is something for people to concern themselves about, and is something that must be resolved at provincial political level - and that resolution may have to come through a clearer electoral mandate for one or other party, or through an improved working relationship between two parties that hold very similar electoral support - it is not something to be feared for necessarily triggering community violence," Graham added. It was unlikely that "slipping into violence as opposed to political posturing" would be tolerated "either by our police force, which is now a democratically led police service, nor is it going to be tolerated by the leadership of the parties at national level", he noted.