King Goodwill Zwelithini, who has died at the age of 72 of Covid-related complications while being treated for diabetes, was one of the most famous ceremonial monarchs in the world and also one of the most powerful.
Like all of them he was a kept man, owing his extravagant existence to the South African taxpayer. Unlike most of them he saw himself as much more than a ceremonial figurehead. He involved himself in politics, most notably when he helped avert a bloody civil war by persuading IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi to participate in the 1994 elections.
In 2018 he attacked the constitution for not giving him a status equivalent to the president. It was an insulting document, he said. "It pains me to note I am a ruler yet there is someone who is above me."
He wielded serious influence and power thanks to the supposed allegiance of 11-million Zulus, which he never allowed the government to forget. Few politicians were prepared to put this allegiance to the test and they invariably bowed the knee to him rather than risk the possible consequences of a confrontation.
Cyril Ramaphosa was pictured doing so quite literally in 2018 shortly before he became president, but all of them from Nelson Mandela on paid him obeisance and were careful not to upset him.
When his widely publicised remarks about foreigners in 2015 as "parasitic fleas" who must go back home were blamed for unleashing the worst xenophobic attacks SA had experienced in a decade, there was a deafening silence from senior government leaders. Similarly when in 2012 he violated the spirit of the country's constitution by saying that gay people were "rotten" and same-sex relationships "not acceptable".
The king made it bluntly clear what would happen if politicians crossed him, never more so than when opposing the government's planned land redistribution policy. He saw this as a threat to the Ingonyama Trust, which in terms of an agreement struck to secure the participation of King Zwelithini, Buthelezi and the IFP in SA's first post-apartheid elections in 1994 gifted him most of the land that had been part of the KwaZulu homeland and which amounted to 29% of KwaZulu-Natal province. Until this agreement the king had proclaimed the "sovereignty" of the Zulu kingdom in terms that stoked fears of a secessionist war.
The king used the trust as a giant piggy bank, extracting huge and escalating rents from more than 5-million mostly rural farming people living on land they'd always regarded as their own, and striking lucrative deals with mining companies which led to many of these captive subjects being forcibly removed from their land when it was "required" for the extraction of the mineral wealth underneath.
The king made it bluntly clear what would happen if politicians crossed him, never more so than when opposing the government's planned land redistribution policy
When a high-level panel led by former president Kgalema Motlanthe recommended the trust be repealed or amended because its implementation infringed on the individual land rights of the king's subjects, he saw it as an attempt to remove the land from his control and reacted with fury. He warned the government not to provoke him on this issue or he'd be "forced to go to war".
The withdrawal of electoral support was another threat he used when he felt his interests were being threatened.
King Zwelithini, a direct descendant of King Cetshwayo, who led the Zulus in the war against the British in 1879, was born at Nongoma in KwaZulu-Natal on July 14 1948, the eldest son of King Cyprian Bhekuzulu kaSolomon and his second wife, Queen Thomo. He was educated at the Bhekuzulu College of Chiefs and then privately tutored.
At the age of 20 he was named successor to the throne and was installed as the eighth monarch of the Zulus in front of 20,000 people at Nongoma on December 3 1971. According to the constitution his role was purely ceremonial and he answered to Buthelezi, Kwa-Zulu's chief minister. But he soon made it clear he was not going to be Buthelezi's lapdog.
In 1975, Buthelezi accused him of meddling in party politics and demanded he get the approval of the homeland cabinet to travel outside the Nongoma tribal area. In 1979, the king branded the KwaZulu government, in effect Buthelezi, as a puppet of the apartheid government.
When his constitutional role was limited he refused to address the KwaZulu parliament as was customary. Buthelezi cut his salary and launched an investigation into allegations that he supported the ANC's armed struggle, which he denied. In the 1980s he supported Buthelezi's opposition to international sanctions and called on Zulus to support Inkatha.
During the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa), Buthelezi was suspected of using the supposed threat to the king's sovereign status in a post- apartheid SA to bolster support for the IFP and himself among Zulus and an excuse to reject participation in the elections.
Buthelezi's influence over the king,
who was dependent on him for his budget and personal safety, had grown. But in 1994 the king, assiduously courted by Mandela, who promised to maintain the monarchy and continue his budget, broke with Buthelezi and declared himself for the
peace process.
The loss of his support was believed to have played a key role in Buthelezi's last-minute decision to participate in the elections. But it also precipitated threats against the king and his family by IFP supporters which culminated in an attack on the royal residence in 2016 by an armed mob. One of his wives and a daughter were seriously injured and had to be hospitalised.
The king, whose eldest son, Prince Lethukuthula Zulu, was murdered in Johannesburg last year, is survived by six wives and 28 children. - Chris Barron
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