21 Facts About Walter Felgate

Walter Sidney Felgate was a South African politician, businessman, and anthropologist.

Walter Felgate served in the National Assembly from 1994 to 1997 and then in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature from 1998 until his retirement in 2003.

Walter Felgate was a speechwriter and close confidante of Buthelezi and later represented the party during the negotiations to end apartheid and subsequent constitutional negotiations.

Walter Felgate was born on 19 November 1930 in Pretoria in the former Transvaal.

Walter Felgate developed a ski-boat business on the South Coast.

Walter Felgate later said that he had approached Albert Luthuli about joining the anti-apartheid African National Congress but had been rebuffed and directed to the Congress of Democrats, the ANC's white-led ally; he said that he was not attracted by the COD, which he found to be dominated by "very affected, pseudo, fringe personalities" from the South African Communist Party.

In 1959, Walter Felgate returned to university, enrolling at the University of Natal to study social anthropology under Eileen Krige.

Walter Felgate was a lecturer in the anthropology department at Rhodes University from 1968 to 1971, when he left to conduct research outside of academia, working for the Chamber of Mines and Human Sciences Research Council in Johannesburg.

Walter Felgate bought Ravan Press and Zenith Printers from the Christian Institute, and from 1975 to 1977 he published The Nation, the unofficial newspaper of Buthelezi's Inkatha movement.

Indeed, Walter Felgate was often viewed as having played an important role in the founding of Inkatha.

However, according to Walter Felgate, he did not start working for Inkatha until 1978; he thereafter became Buthelezi's principal speechwriter, employed as a civil servant in Buthelezi's office in the government of the KwaZulu bantustan.

Later in his life, once he had left Inkatha to become an ANC member, Walter Felgate told the press that his links to the ANC dated back to the same period, the mid-1970s.

Walter Felgate was among the first whites to join Inkatha in 1990 when membership was opened to all races, and he was appointed to the Central Committee of the party, which was to be renamed the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Walter Felgate was a prominent figure in the IFP's delegation to the negotiations to end apartheid, representing the IFP at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa and later serving as its chief negotiator at the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, where he was assisted by Ben Ngubane, Lionel Mtshali, and Mario Ambrosini.

The IFP aborted its election boycott at the last minute and Walter Felgate was elected to represent the IFP in the new National Assembly.

Walter Felgate was absent for much of 1995 while he recovered from triple-bypass surgery.

Walter Felgate later provided the same newspaper with further details in a 2003 interview, adding to the election sabotage claims the allegation that both Buthelezi and apartheid-era defence minister Magnus Malan had been involved in state-sponsored training of IFP hit squads on the Caprivi Strip.

Walter Felgate returned to legislative politics in July 1998, when he was sworn in to an ANC seat in the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature.

Walter Felgate did not complete the term: following speculation that he would retire due to ill health, he resigned from the provincial legislature in February 2003.

Walter Felgate was divorced from Sue Walter Felgate, a United Kingdom-born local politician in Ulundi who was formerly Buthelezi's private secretary and who remained a dedicated member of the IFP until her death in 2003.

Walter Felgate died on 3 January 2008 in Johannesburg after a short illness.