Ann Eveleth
King Goodwill Zwelithini wants South African taxpayers to finance an extensive new royal bureaucracy to help him woo KwaZulu-Natal’s traditional leaders out of the political quagmire he led them into during decades of submission to Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. A royal budget proposal handed to former Provincial and Constitutional Affairs Minister Roelf Meyer and his deputy Mohamed Valli Moosa last month reveals high ambitions on the part of the royal house.
Drafted by the Royal Council, the proposal calls for central government to finance eight new departments to service the “monarch’s needs”, including: communication and public affairs: political affairs; cultural affairs; community development; legal services; foreign affairs; security; and administration.
“Senior management” would receive salaries equivalent to directors general in government departments, while the staff under senior management would be paid according to a Public Service Commission-approved scale. The monarch also wants offices — paid for and furnished by central government — in each of the province’s eight local government regions, as well as provincial offices in the Eastern Cape, Free State, Mpumalanga, and Gauteng, where “people who have strong ties with the KwaZulu-Natal monarchy” work and live.
Valli Moosa said government had not yet formulated a reponse to the proposals, as negotiations around the payment of traditional leaders would still have to go through the Commission on the Remuneration of Traditional Leaders, set up in terms of the controversial Act centralising their payment. Minutes of the February meeting cite remarks by both Meyer and Valli Moosa about the “financial constraints” under which the budget proposal was received.
University of Natal social anthropologist Mary de Haas suggested the proposal was probably “more than they think they’ll get”. She argued that “the problem is that Buthelezi would give the king anything as long as he could control him, and that set a trend for an extravagant lifestyle”.
The king’s representative, Prince Sifiso Zulu, stressed that the budget was for the “institution of ubukhosi” (the hierarchical structure comprising all Zulu traditional leaders) and not for the monarch in his personal capacity. Admitting that the proposal was little more than a starting bid for negotiations, Zulu said: “The problem is that since the time of the defunct KwaZulu government, there has never been a budget for the king or the royal house.”
It has never been clear exactly how much successive governments have spent maintaining Zwelithini and his family. Buthelezi claimed in June 1994 — with the writing on the wall already heralding the monarch’s imminent defection — that construction work on his palaces had cost R7-million, his labourers R2- million, his farming endeavours R500 000, and his “supplementary requirements” over R4- million.
In April 1995, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Frank Mdlalose announced that R2,2-million had been spent on Zwelithini in 1994. Four months later, during a dispute with the monarch, he bumped the figure up to R16,5-million, R7- million of which he said went on security.
African National Congress KwaZulu-Natal finance spokesperson Mike Sutcliffe said the parliamentary finance committee was due to table a report on the matter soon, in terms of a May 1995 legislative resolution calling for the “urgent” unification of the monarch’s budget.
‘Mdlalose has been dragging his feet. At the moment we have no idea what the king is costing us because when something breaks on the farm, money from agriculture is used to fix it — money is coming from all over the place.” Sutcliffe said the extent of the royal budget should be “a matter of open debate”, pointing out that traditional leaders would now be held accountable through the Public Service Commission.
Zulu said the proposal reflected the “new demands and challenges” facing the monarch and stressed that the interim Constitution’s recognition of traditional leadership had co- opted the institution into government, thereby necessitating the new structures.
Great hopes were placed on Zwelithini after his September 1994 split with the IFP but, more than 18 months later, the monarch is still struggling to call his first imbizo (gathering of the Zulu nation) and to convince the province’s 300-odd amakhosi (chiefs) to follow him into “political neutrality”.
If Zwelithini’s efforts to pull chiefs and izinduna out of politics is successful, it would go a long way to restoring peace in the province. And it would also decimate Buthelezi’s power base. The danger, however, exists that other kings, queens and paramount chiefs in South Africa could follow his lead, resulting in billions of rands being siphoned out of the country’s development coffers to support a hereditary — and not always qualified — traditional leadership.
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