Zulu King Zwelithini threatens to establish a separate Zulu state

On 14 February 1994 Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini told President F.W. de Klerk that he is ready to set up a Zulu state covering the KwaZuluhomeland and Natal province as an act of insubordination against the government and African National Congress (ANC). The ANC replied claiming it remained worried that King Zwelithini was always seen to be intervening on behalf of Freedom Alliance (FA) in circumstances where there was an obvious deadlock in negotiations with the ANC. The FA was considered to be an alliance of Afrikaner, right wing formations that included political formations linked to homelands. This suggests that Zwelithini, and by extension, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), were closer to the FA than they were to the ANC. This discredited the IFP in the period leading to and during negotiations for a post apartheid settlement.   

A month before King Zwelithini's meeting with President F.W. de Klerk, negotiations between white right-wingers and the ANC collapsed following ANC President Nelson Mandela's statement that the Afrikaner dream of a white homeland will never come to reality. He warned that the right-wingers risked angering blacks if they pushed their demands. After a meeting with President F.W. de Klerk, Mandela told reporters that the ANC will never concede to the demand for a separate Afrikaner homeland. White right-wing leader Constand Viljoen had recommended an Afrikaner homeland to be centred on the old Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In 1951, the Bantu Authorities Act established a basis for ethnic government in African reserves, known as "homelands.''