Zulus slam door on peace talks

THE ZULU King, Goodwill Zwelithini, has closed the door on negotiations to bring his KwaZulu kingdom into South Africa's transition to democracy by declaring a sovereign monarchy and urging his followers to defend it by force if necessary and to boycott the 26-28 April general elections.

King Goodwill made the call at a rally yesterday in Ulundi, capital of KwaZulu, a self-governing homeland ruled by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party. 'We the Zulu nation convene today on the battleground which subjugated the freedom of our forefathers,' he told a crowd of 12,000. 'We here today proclaim before the world our freedom and sovereignty and our unwavering will to defend it at all costs.' He said it was his duty 'to take a decisive step to ensure that our nation will survive as a nation in the centuries to come.'

King Goodwill's speech came as the commission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone confirmed that it had evidence that senior generals in the South African police, including Lieutenant-General Basie Smit, had been smuggling arms to Inkatha. Buthelezi's group and Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) have been fighting a low-intensity civil war in KwaZulu and Natal that has claimed up to 10,000 lives in three years.

President F W de Klerk said the general and a colleague had been sent on leave while an international team investigated.

The Zulu king said in his speech: 'We are faced with the historical dilemma of either succumbing and forever relinquishing our inalienable right and sovereignty, or to take it upon ourselves to realise and bring into existence what is ours, what belonged to our fathers and what belongs to our children.'

The bellicose tone came at a particularly sensitive moment, when the ANC and Mr de Klerk's government were involved in intense negotiations to bring Inkatha into the elections.

Chief Buthelezi had earlier announced a boycott of next month's polls because he alleged that the new interim constitution did not devolve enough power to the provinces. His decision may have been swayed by opinion polls showing that he and Inkatha would lose to the ANC in the renamed province of KwaZulu/Natal.

The assembly was originally called to mark a meeting between the King and Mr Mandela, but the ANC cancelled after it said it had learnt of a plot against Mr Mandela's life. The ANC was also irked by Chief Buthelezi's decision to turn what it expected to be a private meeting into a public rally.

Mr Mandela appeared earlier this week during a visit to the formerly nominally independent territory of Bophuthatswana to be losing patience with Chief Buthelezi and the Zulu King when he referred to 'toy tyrants'. On Wednesday Chief Buthelezi accused the ANC and the ruling National Party of attempting to engineer a repeat of last week's collapse of the Bophuthatswana government of ex-President Lucas Mangope. Such a move, he warned, 'will spawn a struggle for liberation from ANC/National Party oppression which will have no parallel in Africa'.

The rally, which featured Zulu warriors marching in traditional dress and carrying spears, shields and axes, was policed by 2,000 Inkatha 'self-defence units', trained by a former white South African policeman, Phillip Powel.