Legal battle: Zulu royal family lawyer Barnabas Xulu (above) has said the Ingonyama Trust Board, appointed by Minister Thoko Didiza, cannot take decisions regarding the Ingonyama Trust’s assets. Photo: Gallo Images
Zulu royals are preparing to go to court to prevent the sale of a farm belonging to the Ingonyama Trust before their legal challenges to King MisuZulu ka Zwelithini’s authority have been concluded.
Their lawyer, Barnabas Xulu, has demanded an undertaking from the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) that it will not allow the sale of the uMhlali farm before the cases against the monarch have been concluded in the Pietermaritzburg high court and in the supreme court of appeal.
Xulu also wants the ITB to halt settlement talks with Vodacom over the placement of its infrastructure on land owned by the trust, which administers nearly three million hectares of land in KwaZulu-Natal on behalf of the king.
In a letter to the board this week, Xulu said his clients — who included Prince Mbonisi Zulu — were aware that the board had met on 17 May to decide upon the sale of the farm and the settlement with Vodacom, understood to be pegged at more than R40 million annually.
Xulu said it was “premature and unlawful” for the board to take “critical decisions regarding core assets of the Ingonyama Trust” because the court challenges to the legitimacy of the king, its trustee and chairperson, were still ongoing.
Judgment has been reserved in the Pietermaritzburg high court challenge to his powers over the board and amakhosi and the appointment of the current board, while the challenge to his appointment as king was still pending in the supreme court of appeal (SCA).
Xulu asked for an undertaking by 24 May that the ITB “will not proceed to make any decisions regarding the aforegoing, pending the outcome of the PMB [high court] and SCA matters.”
He also asked that any decision that might already have been taken on 17 May “will not be implemented pending the outcome of the PMB and SCA matters. Should we not receive the requested undertakings, we hold instructions to approach the court on an urgent basis to seek interdictory relief in this matter,” Xulu wrote.
He said in the case that the ITB was “unwilling or unable to provide the undertakings sought”, they should provide the particulars of the parties involved so that they could be joined in the court proceedings that would follow.
According to internal correspondence seen by the Mail & Guardian, a meeting of the ITB’s tenure committee, set for 17 May, was converted into a full board meeting to discuss the two matters, which had been tabled at the king’s request.
In a letter to board members, ITB chief executive officer Vela Mngwengwe said the proposed tenure committee meeting “could not continue” because of the “type of decisions that are sought”.
The tenure committee did not have the powers to “approve a proposed settlement, as envisaged in the case of Vodacom”, or in the case of a number of smaller companies, including Eagle Towers, which were operating in the telecommunications space.
In the letter, Mngwengwe also requested that a progress report on the outright sale of the uMhlali farm be included on the agenda for the meeting “due to its urgency”.
On Thursday, the king and traditional prime minister Thulasizwe Buthelezi called a meeting of the province’s amakhosi in Ulundi as part of a pushback against what the latter described as “serious threats to the survival of Ingonyama Trust”.
Buthelezi had last week accused the agriculture, land reform and rural development minister, Thoko Didiza, whose department funds the ITB, of attempting to undermine the authority of the amakhosi and that of the trust.
Minister Thoko Didiza. Photo : Gallo Images/Frennie Shivambu)
He also accused the current board, appointed by Didiza in an attempt to regularise its workings, of acting against its mandate by refusing to carry out his instructions as chairperson.
Last month the M&G reported that the board had declined to appoint the king’s legal team that is fighting his court battles with his siblings, uncles and aunts to carry out an audit of ITB land on the board’s behalf.
It has also stopped any further payment of his legal fees from the revenue it collects, after making payments of about R8 million in terms of an agreement signed by the board’s previous chairperson, Jerome Ngwenya.
Buthelezi, a member of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) national council and the Zululand district municipality mayor, said in a notice to amakhosi this week that “there were continued efforts to take away the land under control of amakhosi, who hold this land in trust on behalf of the Zulu people”.
Buthelezi said in the notice that the meeting was the first step towards a “national gathering of all Zulus”.
In 2018, after the publication of a report by the review panel chaired by former deputy president Kgalema Mothlanthe, the king’s late father, Goodwill Zwelithini ka BhekuZulu, led a similar mobilisation along with the late IFP leader and traditional Zulu prime minister, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Didiza has dismissed Buthelezi’s claims that she wanted to usurp the authority of the chiefs to sign permission-to-occupy certificates for residents of land under their control.
She said Buthelezi’s claims were false and that he either did not understand the law with regard to the ITB, or had “elected to deliberately mislead” the public over the issue.
The ITB had not responded to questions from the Mail & Guardian by the time of going to print.