CAUSE OF DEATH: Gatsha Buthelezi confirmed dead after battle with suspected back pain management

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Gatsha Buthelezi confirmed dead after battle with suspected back pain management. 

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu nationalist who positioned himself as Nelson Mandela’s most powerful Black rival in South Africa’s tortuous transformation from a white segregationist society to a multiracial democracy in the 1990s, died on Saturday. He was 95.

His death was announced in a statement by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. It did not say where he died or give a cause. He said Mr. Buthelezi had been “an outstanding leader in the political and cultural life of our nation, including the ebbs and flows of our liberation struggle, the transition which secured our freedom in 1994 and our democratic dispensation.”

Mangosuthu Buthelezi obituary

Born on August 27, 1928, at the Ceza Swedish Missionary Hospital in Mahlabathini, southeastern Natal, Buthelezi hailed from a distinguished Zulu lineage.

In the political turmoil of apartheid’s final years, Mangosuthu Buthelezi (pronounced mahn-goh-SOO-TOO boo-teh-LAY-zee) was the third man in South Africa: the linchpin with whom F.W. de Klerk, president of the white minority government, and Mr. Mandela, a global symbol of resistance to injustice released from prison after 27 years, had to reckon to hammer out a new Constitution and the future of the nation.

Proud, ambitious, descended from royalty and intolerant of criticism, Mr. Buthelezi was a hereditary chief of the Zulus, South Africa’s largest ethnic group. Like his battle-hardened ancestors, who had challenged colonial invaders in the 19th century, Mr. Buthelezi sometimes wore leopard skins and wielded assegai spears, but only in ritual war dances for political advantage. He was also the prime minister of KwaZulu, the homeland of six million Zulus, and the founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party, a Zulu political and cultural movement with 1.9 million members.

News of the prominent Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) leader’s passing was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in a statement released on Saturday morning.

“Prince Buthelezi, who served as the democratic South Africa’s first minister of home affairs, passed away in the early hours of today, Saturday, 9 September 2023, just two weeks after the celebration of his 95th birthday,” Ramaphosa wrote.

While the exact cause of death was not revealed in the family’s statement, Buthelezi died weeks after he was discharged from hospital, following months of treatment for a complication that arose from a medical procedure for back pain management.