Often viewed in the West as the leading candidate for head of state of a black-ruled South Africa, Chief Buthelezi emerges here more as a supporter than an opponent of government policy toward blacks. The authors detail the attitudes and actions which have set Buthelezi at odds with virtually all other black political leaders in the republic today, including: the Zulu tribal identification of his political movement, Inkatha; his reliance on the government for direct financial support and patronage; and his de facto alliance with the government in suppressing black trade union organizers, student activists and consumer boycott activists. Impressively dense or well-nigh impenetrable, depending on the reader's taste, the book has an important message for outside observers of South Africa: what may seem to Westerners as appealing "modernization" is, in the context of mainstream South African black politics, beyond the pale.
