tection for both Zulu and Afrikaans culture; KwaZulu would be joined to
Natal province with the name KwaZulu/Natal;
and members of the new
parliament who wanted a Volkstaat would be able to elect a council to ex-
plore that possibility. Since Buthelezi still did not yield, Mandela went to
Durban on March
I to meet him and make an impassioned speech for
peace: "1will go down on my knees," he said, "to beg those who want to
drag our country into bloodshed and to persuade them notto do SO."55 De
Klerk, too, held a series of meetings with Buthelezi and the Zulu king,
Goodwill Zwelethini, but to no avai1.56 Buthelezi still refused to partici-
pate in the election; but Viljoen decided to keep the election option open
by announcing the formation of a new party-the
Freedom Front party-
and registering it just before midnight on March 4, the extended deadline
set by the Independent Electoral Commission. 57
A week later, the opposition from the right and its associated Home-
lands collapsed. Lucas Mangope, the dictator of Bophuthatswana,
in-
sisted that his Homeland should maintain the "independence" it had been
given by the apartheid regime and banned the ANC from campaigning
there. But the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the territory,