King Misuzulu KaZwelithini. (Photo by Gallo) Images/Darren Stewart)
King Misuzulu kaZwelithini’s uncle, Prince Mbonisi Zulu, has accused his nephew of abusing legal processes to “annoy and harass” him and other royal family members by asking the Pietermaritzburg high court to declare him a vexatious litigant.
The application is being brought by the king in response to Mbonisi’s attempt to stop the KwaZulu-Natal government and the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) from paying his legal fees and other expenses.
Mbonisi and other royal family members also want the court to set aside the appointment of the ITB board, and to stop the king from exercising his powers over it and the province’s amakhosi.
Their application is part of the battle over the Zulu throne between the king and his uncle and half brother, Simakade Zulu, who in December succeeded in having his recognition by president Cyril Ramaphosa set aside by the Pretoria high court.
The president has applied for leave to appeal in that matter.
In an affidavit submitted to the Pietermaritzburg court on Monday, Mbonisi said the vexatious litigant application had been brought in bad faith because it had not been raised by the king’s legal team during a meeting to discuss the case on 13 February.
Instead, the counter application was “sprung” on Mbonisi’s legal team in an attempt to “silence us from exercising our ancient rights as the royal family to ensure that the succession to the throne accords with the law and customs”.
This, and other delays, had forced Mbonisi’s lawyers to approach the court to ask for condonation in their late submission of the affidavit.
Mbonisi said a refusal by the court to condone the application would be a “severe limitation of our rights” and would also allow Misuzulu to “continue intimidating and bullying us into abandoning our duties as senior members of the royal family”.
The king was attempting to “[intimidate] me from performing my role as a royal family member to ensure that the succession dispute is resolved in accordance with the law,” Mbonisi said.
He said he and other Zulu royals involved in the case “will not rest until that is done because it goes to the very heart of the Zulu kingdom”.
“The authenticity of this mighty kingdom depends on the legitimacy of its kind and where a king has been imposed by unlawful means, it is the duty of these applicants to correct this wrong, ” Mbonisi said.
The complaint of vexatious litigation “is itself hashed to harass and annoy rather than [being] a legitimate pursuit for a competent legal remedy”, he said.
Mbonisi said they were not “fighting” the king, but doing their duty to ensure that “the sacred Zulu throne is occupied by a legitimate successor — who is identified by the Zulu royal family”.
He said the king “loathes the truth of his own identity” because “we regard him as our son, no matter what his thoughts are”.
Mbonisi said they would support Misuzulu’s claim to the throne should the courts rule in his favour.
“If it turns out that our law and customs support his claims to be king, we will support him, but we are not intimidated by his imperious conduct towards us.”
Mbonisi said the king had “exhausted” the late Mangosuthu Buthelezi, “the one person who stood by him” to the point where the king’s traditional prime minister had “essentially disowned him.”
Mbonisi said they had approached the courts because it was their duty to do so as members of the Zulu royal family.
“What we are doing is what our ancestors, including his father, our brother, expect us to do.” Mbonisi said. “ The Zulu kingdom expects us to do what we are doing. We are asserting our rights as members of the Zulu royal family with a sacred duty.”
He said the attempt to characterise them as “mere old grumpy royals who are messing things up for him” was “unfortunate” and “misses the point”.
Mbonisi said they were entitled to bring the application to “stop public funds being used to fight his battles to hold on to a throne that he unlawfully occupies”.
Turning to the ITB, Mbonisi said the board was operating illegally because five of its members had been unlawfully appointed after their predecessors were removed or left.
The king, the sole trustee of the Ingonyama Trust, had made several appointments of board chairpersons, which he had “arbitrarily withdrawn” before taking on the role himself.
This was prima facie proof that the board was operating unlawfully.
“If the board is operating unlawfully … this places the management of the Zulu kingdom assets at great risk, to the prejudice of the beneficiaries,” Mbonisi said.
The president, the KwaZulu-Natal premier and the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs had not chosen to oppose Mbonisi’s application, arguing that they were not party to the decisions he was seeking to challenge.
Mbonisi said he noted this, but that they had notified the president because they “seek any interest he may have in the proper and lawful administration of the Zulu kingdom”.
The premier had not opposed, but had deposed an affidavit in which she had provided “incomplete and to a large extent false facts with regard to her disbursement of funds to the king”.
Mbonisi said they do not “attack the payment” of Misuzulu’s salary, set by the president at R1.2 million a year, but want to ensure that “no further payment” may be made to the king outside of this amount.
Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube’s office had reportedly paid R8.5 million for the king’s legal fees by 7 March, and had “bound herself to the payment” of further amounts towards his legal bills.
“It is apparent that the funds which are being disbursed by the office of the premier are not for the purpose of the royal household or Zulu royal household as alleged in the premier’s affidavit,” Mbonisi said.
There was an “unlawful settling” of the king’s legal fees from the “coffers of the public, without any legal justification or basis in the form of the Public Finance Management Act or any legislation”.
Dube-Ncube also failed to “specify the law which allows her to pay the king’s legal fees”.
“The premier thus has somehow become embroiled in the dispute involving the liability for the legal fees … all of which are in his personal capacity, much in the same way as the Ingonyama Trust has been bound to pay,” he said.
Mbonisi said the king had gone to great length to claim he had sought the same relief as he had in two earlier matters before the KwaZulu-Natal judge president, Mjabuliseni Madondo, and Judge Piet Koen in the Pietermaritzburg court, and that the Koen matter was being appealed.
This was not correct because the applicants and the relief sought were different from those in both matters, while the Koen judgment has not been taken on appeal.
“The parties are not the same, the cause of action is substantially different and there are no other proceedings with the parties and cause of action, which are pending,” he said.
Mbonisi said the king’s challenge to his legal standing in the matter was flawed because he was both a brother to the late king and a senior member of the royal family. He was also acting on behalf of ubukhosi [the institution of royalty] and in the “public interest of the Zulu people”.
The relief sought dealt with “the unlawful disbursement of funds”.
“This in itself affects the whole Zulu nation and its residents. More than this, it is also an invasion of the constitutional rights that I, as well as the other applicants and the entire Zulu royal family, are entitled to,” he said.
Mbonisi said the king has “no answer” to their application and “now seeks to enlist the strategy of scandalising us without any basis”.
The president had, Mbonisi said, misconstrued his powers of recognition and had not permitted the king’s “aunts and uncles” to identify him as successor.
He had “failed to allow the Zulu royal family the role accorded to them by; law and the Constitution — which is to identify and appoint a successor to the Zulu throne”.
Mbonisi said assertions that Buthelezi was “head of the royal family” and that KwaPhindangene, his traditional seat, was a royal house, were “wrong” and “false”.
So too was the king’s claim that there were five royal houses, because there were 13, the heads of which should have been involved in the process of identifying the new king.
They had not.
Turning to the king’s statement that he had resigned from the 13 companies he had set up, Mbonisi said there was “no evidence of when he resigned and why”.
“The existence of these companies, coming as they do on the eve of his unlawful recognition, clearly demonstrates that he intends to use them when it is convenient to do so,” Mbonisi said.
“He cannot deny that he established them in the hope that his unlawful position of king would provide him the opportunities to advance his commercial interests,” Mbonisi said.
The matter will be heard on 26 April.