– Kept onside –
In the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 Zwelithini’s province, KwaZulu Natal, was wracked by violence between supporters of the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party and Mandela’s African National Congress.
“This made the new government particularly concerned not to antagonise the king and his supporters for fear of triggering more violence,” says Steven Friedman, director of the centre for the study of democracy at the University of Johannesburg.
“The perks which he receives could therefore be viewed as an attempt to prevent that violence. If keeping the king in relative luxury is the price which must be paid for saving lives, it is worth paying.”
University of South Africa analyst Somadoda Fikeni agrees.
“Remember that when some of these areas were conquered by colonial government people never stopped recognising their kings and their chiefs as their authority.
“These institutions do not depend on government recognition alone and therefore a government which wants to assume a greater effective control and have peace has to work with them.”
Fikeni points to efforts in other African countries, such as Mozambique, where incoming socialist governments tried to scrap traditional leaders only to be forced later to reinstate them.
But independent KwaZulu Natal-based analyst Protas Madlala dismisses tribal classifications.
“The architects of (apartheid) oppression skilfully disintegrated all of us, saying ‘you are Zulu, you are Xhosa’.
“Some of us are trying to resist that, to say ‘look we are a common nation, we are all South Africans’.”
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