MisuZulu kaZwelithini. Photo: Darren Stewart/Gallo Images
The Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) has gone to court to seek a costs order against Prince Mbonisi Zulu for filing and withdrawing an application to stop King MisuZulu kaZwelithini from exercising his powers as its trustee.
The application is the latest move in the ongoing legal battle over control of the Zulu kingdom and the trust, which receives millions in lease fees from mines and other commercial tenants each year.
Lawyers for the board approached the Pietermaritzburg high court for an order for costs, including two counsel, after Mbonisi’s lawyer Barnabas Xulu — who brought the application last month — withdrew the matter on 26 October, the same day the ITB’s legal team filed its responding papers.
Xulu refiled Mbonisi’s application against the king, the ITB, the presidency, KwaZulu-Natal premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube and Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Minister Thoko Didiza last week.
However, the application for the costs order is set to be argued in court on Tuesday, 21 November, rather than at the conclusion of the matter, after the ITB’s legal team declined to withdraw it in the wake of the re-filing.
The application was lodged on 16 November, after Xulu’s second filing, an unusual move by the board’s lawyers, with costs normally being determined by the court at the end of proceedings.
Mbonisi has approached the court to stop MisuZulu, his nephew, from exercising his powers as trustee of the ITB, which runs the day-to-day business of the Ingonyama Trust, set up to administer nearly 3 million hectares of traditionally controlled land on his behalf.
Mbonisi and four other senior members of the Zulu royal family want the state to cut its funding for MisuZulu until judgment has been delivered in their challenge to his legitimacy as king by the Pretoria high court.
They also want to stop the ITB from funding the king — it paid R8 million towards his legal fees — and have accused him of setting up 13 companies since he was installed in order to loot the coffers of the entity.
Mbonisi has asked the court to set aside the new board, appointed by Didiza earlier this year, and reinstate its previous members and chairperson Jerome Ngwenya, who was fired by the king in March.
MisuZulu recalled Ngwenya after the Mail & Guardian exposed a dubious R41 million investment by Ingonyama Holdings, of which he was a director, which was paid to consultants who disappeared. The money has never been recovered.
The ITB’s legal team has in turn accused Ngwenya of massive abuse of the trust’s funds, furnishing the court with proof that he paid the king’s tax bills, bought him luxury cars and funded his lifestyle — none of which the ITB was meant to pay for.
In papers before court, ITB chief executive officer Vela Mngwengwe said that they had been compelled to pay the king’s legal fees in terms of an undertaking made by Ngwenya before his removal.
Mngwengwe said they had informed the king that he would not receive any funds from the ITB while the legal fees were being paid off over a 26 month period.
The monarch, the province’s amakhosi and communities living on ITB land are meant to receive benefits from the revenue collected by the ITB from mining houses and other commercial tenants.
The application to stop the king exercising his powers is due to be argued in the Pietermaritzburg court in February.