Hail to the new Zulu king kaZwelithini amid succession intrigue

One of Africa’s proudest indigenous nations, the Zulu of southern-central Africa, has a new monarch, but only after sometimes bitter close-quarters ‘fighting’ in the royal household over who should succeed much-loved King Goodwill Zwelithini.

It was not a foregone conclusion that King Misuzulu kaZwelithini, as he now is known, would ascend to the throne, which he did last Saturday.

Even on the day of his ‘coronation’, contestation over the crown was still ongoing, with an attempted intercession through the courts put aside on the basis of a lack of urgency.

There were legal wrangles over the succession and the will of the late King Zwelithini from almost the moment of his death last year from diabetes complications.

And there are still some powerful voices in the Zulu royal ranks calling for other ‘more legitimate’ candidates to become the next king.

Turned out in their thousands

Last weekend’s events, however, rendered most of the arguments moot, since it was clear that the Zulu nation had turned out in their many thousands to witness the ‘presentation’ of the new monarch.

It is an intensely spiritual and private process wherein only the new king enters the ‘royal kraal’, there, alone to be presented to those who came before him.

This formal step is also the final one for a king of the Zulu to be fully anointed.

Despite President Cyril Ramaphosa issuing a certificate of acknowledgement of his position in March, based on representations from the royal Zulu household on who should next be their king, and the weekend’s ‘coronation’ ceremony, there is bound to be further disputation as elements in the royal family show no signs of backing down in their support of two other candidates.

Western-style courts

The path from the coronation of King kaZwelithini to that of another of King Zwelithini’s numerous sons seems almost impossible to plot, and is certainly unprecedented, especially the use of Western-style courts to adjudicate traditional issues under contestation.

But that does not mean the legal challenges will disappear either, especially as one faction in the royal clan came forward just days before King kaZwelithini’s ascension to the throne to claim it for another royal scion.

It remains to be seen, say legal analysts, where the courts will go with respect to the last will of King Zwelithini, which one of his six wives is challenging as bogus. But in terms of the royal succession, the issue is settled, according to Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, traditional chief adviser and prime minister to King Zwelithini.

Warlike royal leaders

The new Zulu king inherits a kingdom made both powerful and vulnerable to intrigue by its history of having warlike royal leaders in the mould of Shaka, most famous of all Zulus.

Some leaders rose to power with the blood of contenders on their iklwa, the Zulu name for the short stabbing spear with a wide blade developed for lethal close-range combat by Shaka, to devastating effect, and so named to mimic the sound of the blade going into and coming out of the belly of an opponent.

Contention for power is almost an inextricable aspect of Zulu royalty.

As such, machinations in the courts may go on for some time to come, but no change is expected to the now monarchical status of kaZwelithini.

Born on September 23, 1974, Misuzulu is the third oldest surviving son of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, and the first for King Goodwill’s Great Wife, Queen Mantfombi Dlamini.

Princess Mantfombi Dlamini is from Eswatini, meaning that for some in the Zulu royal household the new king was not of ‘pure Zulu blood’, despite the close kinship between the Zulu and the Swazi, being direct neighbours with largely shared cultural and ethnic heritage.

That contention is one element the new king will have to deal with, though with the blessing of the Zulu nation, as in Saturday’s events, and of clan leaders, many bedecked in leopard skins to donate royalty, and other animal skins for lesser leaders, there is little hope for a successful ‘dethronement’.

Coronation ceremony

The problem for those opposed to the new king is that the entire world saw his coronation ceremony, amid much fanfare and with all the spectacle of a Zulu royal enthronement on display.

The colourful ceremony featured thousands of spectators, ‘ordinary Zulus’, almost all clan leaders and almost all of the royal household, with the same few notable exceptions being those wanting other candidates.

Usually conservative media outlets were unabashed in covering every element of the ‘coronation’, including dancing and chanting bare-breasted maidens bedecked in beads, clan leaders and traditional royalty in their animal-skin garb, with hide shields, spears and other symbols of Zulu culture.

The ceremony took place in a remote part of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, but throngs were on hand to witness the making of a Zulu king.

Ceremony unimpeded

Among dignitaries were royalty from ethnically connected tribal groupings, including the closely related Xhosa tribe, as well as from those far afield as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and the Congo.

Despite a last-ditch legal effort by a small grouping in the Zulu royal family opposed to the traditional ‘reception’ and recognition of the newly raised monarch of South Africa’s largest ethnic grouping, the ceremony went ahead unimpeded and as if the court proceedings were not even happening.

After the new 47-year-old Zulu monarch was accepted by the “gathered nation and the ancestors”, that was the end of all disputation, said Prince Buthelezi, still acting in his role as lead royal adviser and traditional prime minister.

But the king will have much to do to heal old wounds stemming from conflicts of the colonial and apartheid eras, and even still ongoing.

In doing so, he will have had to live up to his own names: King Misuzulu Sinqobile Hlomesakhishlangu kaZwelithini’s first name translates into English as ‘restorer of the Zulus’, his second as ‘one who has overcome many struggles and is victorious’, and his third as ‘fortifier’, by extension, ‘of the Zulu people’.

Much to repair

After almost 50 years of his father’s rule, the new Zulu monarch has much to live up to and much to repair, including the ongoing succession dispute in the royal household.

Queen Sibongile Dlamini, late King Goodwill's first wife, has backed her son, Prince Simakade Zulu, as the rightful heir, while some of King Goodwill's brothers last week put forward another prince, one of 28 of the deceased king’s children from his six wives, as their candidate for the throne.

While traditional royals are recognised in South Africa under its ethnically inclusive constitution in the democratic era, traditional leaders do not have many legal powers beyond those that are part of the social and cultural welfare of their peoples.

As important as the official recognition granted by Ramaphosa is Misuzulu’s acceptance as their king by the Zulu people themselves.

In terms of last weekend’s ceremony, the new king walked solo, as tradition demands, to stand before the tribe’s ancestors for their recognition, in the royal ‘cattle kraal’ at the palace of KwaKhethomthandayo, in Nongoma, a small town in the Zulu heartland. Many thousands ululated and sang their praises and support. That acceptance seems abundantly clear and beyond dispute.

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Zulus are famed for fierce warriorship and traditionalist culture.

They are famed for their battle prowess, which allowed the ethnic grouping to expand from central-east Africa to become one of the dominant groupings in the sub-Saharan region, peaking in power at about the time the first white settlers arrived in what is now Cape Town in the late 17th century.

The Zulu battled other tribal groupings in their expansionist period, incorporating defeated groups and tribes into the growing Zulu presence, and leading to famed King Shaka – the 19th-century leader still revered for having united usually fractious Zulu clans into a single Zulu nation – who reinvented close-quarters Zulu fighting tactics and weapons, making both far more lethal and thereby inflicting heavy battlefield losses on British colonisers.

Ultimately, the Zulu succumbed to the technologically overwhelming superior firepower of the colonising troops by the late 19th century. But there remains a broad trans-ethnic identification with the Zulu, as the weekend’s ‘coronation’ ceremony illustrated, with a proud and shared history of indigenous resistance to colonial and apartheid-era oppression.

Saturday’s ceremonial presentation of the new Zulu king in the presence of traditional kings and leaders from countries far afield demonstrated that the Zulu mythos and power have transcended narrow ethnic divides, and put on show an unashamed, unbowed culture still resonant with a powerful call to Africa’s pre-colonial roots.