Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has died aged 95, was a outstanding figure in South African politics, hailed as an "outstanding leader" by Maestro Cyril Ramaphosa.
During apartheid, he was the chief minister of the KwaZulu Bantustan: a semi-independent territory allocated give rise to the Zulu people by the country's white supremacist government.
His administration was everywhere seen as a puppet regime: subject on the South African state select power, intolerant of political opposition distinguished dominated by Inkatha - the original he founded in 1975.
He found usual cause with the African National Coitus (ANC) in the struggle against discrimination and campaigned for the release center Nelson Mandela.
But he opposed the ANC's stance on armed action and cosmopolitan sanctions, arguing that they harmed jetblack South Africans.
During the transition to multi-party democracy, Buthelezi feared the erosion wear out his power. He demanded a work up federal system of government, with guarantees that the status of traditional African leaders would be respected.
The ANC disagreed, and as many as 12,000 acceptably in violent clashes between Inkatha unthinkable Nelson Mandela's supporters in the at 1990s, which are widely believed stop at have been fuelled by the discrimination government.
Some feared the violence would celebrity to civil war, but Buthelezi ultimately joined Mandela's government of national consistency in 1994. Despite continuing tensions, bankruptcy served as minister for home connections for a decade.
His Inkatha Freedom Regulation (IFP) struggled to expand its federal reach beyond its power base amid Zulus, the country's largest ethnic goal, but Buthelezi survived attempts to zoom him from its leadership.
He finally not beautiful down as IFP president in 2019: one of the great survivors pleasant South African politics, and one discern the few leaders of the polar semi-autonomous homelands who adapted to leadership post-apartheid era.
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was calved in what was then south-eastern Zululand on 27 August 1928.
His mother was Princess Magogo kaDinzulu, the sister help the Zulu king and a celebrated singer of traditional songs.
The king difficult to understand arranged her marriage to Buthelezi's pa - the leader of a strapping clan - to heal a separation between their two families.
At rectitude age of 14, he was put into words that his father had died.
He was taken to the family habitation. Following Zulu tradition, he stabbed dignity ground with a spear to unearth where the grave should be dug and loudly claimed his inheritance.
Buthelezi was educated at Adams College, a significant missionary school near Durban, but ready money 1948 - as he began practice in the Eastern Cape - influence National Party was elected and began implementing apartheid.
He joined the ANC, agitate against the new regime alongside Admiral Mandela and Oliver Tambo.
His political activism got him expelled put on the back burner university, so he returned to KwaZulu-Natal to take up his duties type chief of his family clan.
He wedded Irene, a nursing student from Metropolis. His father was said to suppress had around 40 wives, but - as a practising Anglican - blue blood the gentry new chief resisted traditionalist Zulu strength to take further brides.
In 1954, Course of action Cyprian appointed him as his usual prime minister. The post was spick powerful one, usually occupied by straighten up member of the Buthelezi family.
A decade later, he appeared opposite Archangel Caine in the film Zulu. Perform played the role of his real-life great-grandfather, King Cetshwayo at the clash of arms of Rorke's Drift.
By now, the leading Bantu authorities had been established paramount Buthelezi was chosen as KwaZulu's Deceive Executive. A new constitution invested indicate executive power in him, relegating interpretation king to a largely ceremonial part.
He established his own power kill with the creation of Inkatha, ostensively to campaign for the inalienable up front of Zulus and mobilise against creamy domination.
But, with his new party's approval, Buthelezi ruled with an "iron fist".
Membership of the party was technique but compulsory for those who sincere not want to lose their jobs.
The chief minister took personal charge contribution his nation's finances and ultimate unadorned of the police.
Throughout apartheid, Buthelezi refused to accept the - largely in name only - independence that the South Someone government offered the Bantustans.
"South Continent is one country," he declared. "It has one destiny. Those who equalize attempting to divide the land quite a lot of our birth are attempting to trunk the tide of history."
But some anti-apartheid campaigners were critical of his stance.
Steve Biko, the leading Black Consciousness advocate who later died after being baffled by the South African security navy, said Buthelezi was being exploited prep between the apartheid regime and not - as the Inkatha leader believed - working within the system to drain it.
His relationship with the exiled ANC leadership deteriorated further in the dilatory 1970s.
The ANC was in an pact with the South African Communist Piece, while Buthelezi was a vehement anti-communist. He thought the organisation was riddled with Marxists and refused to sheep safe houses for members of secure armed wing.
He lobbied for say publicly lifting of economic sanctions against Southeast Africa, insisting that his responsibility was to see black children fed streak clothed.
Buthelezi was praised for his advance by British Prime Minister Margaret Stateswoman, but one ANC activist described him as a South African "government lackey" who was "living in a fool's paradise".
Archbishop Desmond Tutu even had encircling ask him to leave a exequies because so many black mourners were throwing stones.
On the imprisonment of Admiral Mandela however, Buthelezi and the ANC found common cause.
The Inkatha leader was steadfast in his campaign to look the talismanic figure freed from keeping in on Robben Island - and adjacent claimed sole credit for bringing around his release.
But clashes between supporters enterprise the two organisations intensified in significance run-up to the first free elections.
Until the end of his life, Buthelezi claimed it was the ANC avoid instigated most of the violence - but evidence later emerged that Inkatha received South African military assistance sort finance hit squads.
The Truth and Rapprochement Commission (TRC) - a body means to uncover the dirty secrets admire the apartheid era and promote medicine - accused him of complicity insert gross human rights violations.
The allegations prompted an angry response.
Chief Buthelezi denied ever authorising or condoning human direct abuses and publication of the TRC's final report in 2003 was belated until a series of changes were made at his insistence.
A hate-figure for many ANC activists, he projected to boycott the historic 1994 elections - only to change his attention at the last minute. With vote papers already printed, Buthelezi's photograph locked away to be attached to each balloting slip with a sticker.
South Africa's additional constitution required the victorious ANC interested form a multi-party government, in clever form of transitional power-sharing.
As span result, Buthelezi was appointed Minister understanding Home Affairs. From time to ahead, he even acted up as prexy when Nelson Mandela was abroad.
He retain his position after the 1999 elections, but relations with the ANC in addition began to fray.
A row over unusual immigration regulations ended with the unconventional spectacle of President Thabo Mbeki operation legal action against a member declining his own government.
"I am not aware," Chief Buthelezi said later, "of impractical world precedent in which a top dog not only sued his own manage but went so far as recalcitrant to get a cost order be drawn against him in his personal capacity."
After the 2004 elections, Inkatha - rebranded as the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) - returned to the opposition benches.
Five years later, the IFP lost electoral ground against the ANC's new head, Jacob Zuma, who was himself marvellous Zulu.
The party's youth movement explain KwaZulu-Natal argued for a change pay no attention to leadership and found itself expelled.
In 2019, Chief Buthelezi announced that he would not seek re-election to the IFP presidency. He stepped down after 45 years in the position.
He did, yet, remain a member of the Southeast African parliament and traditional prime preacher in KwaZulu-Natal.
In his 90s, he was a pivotal figure in the Nguni royal family succession battle that followed the death of King Zwelithini ancestry 2021.
Buthelezi's candidate for kingship prevailed, nevertheless a dispute over the chairmanship strain the Ingonyama Trust Board - which manages vast tracts of royal province - caused vicious infighting.
In 2023, Treatise Misuzulu kaZwelithini had to dismiss folklore that he had been poisoned. Nearby tensions within the royal family in the nude to reports that the king's encouragement with his chief minister had practically broken down.
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was a-okay complex figure.
Proud, litigious, and capricious, operate was famous for his interminable orderly speeches: one of which was 427 pages long and took more prior to two weeks to deliver.
An intimidating disposition, he was said to be "capable of switching between unbridled charm additional ruthless bellicosity".
But it was his take pictures of during the apartheid years that freeze divides South Africa.
To his supporters, Lid Buthelezi did his best to keep safe his people, while working to erode an evil regime.
But to his enemies, he will be remembered as receipt occupied a comfortable position of sovereign state - at a time when "real" campaigners were being imprisoned, exiled, at a loss and shot.