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RECENT moves by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini have raised the stakes in his power battle with Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Zwelithini refused to attend this weekend’s “imbizo” called by the IFP-dominated House of Traditional Leaders to adopt a “Zulu covenant” binding Zulus to the party’s “federalist” constitutional principles.
In the past, the IFP moved quickly to clip the monarch’s wings every time he spread them. This week, the IFP-led KwaZulu-Natal government respond-ed by trying to ground him on the eve of his planned visit to
In the past it was only Buthelezi who could garner international support through visits to various heads of state. Alliances between the IFP and the governments of Britain, the United States and Germany were won on the back of red-carpeted trips by the IFP leader in the days of apartheid when the king was a subdued puppet on his Nongoma throne.
Since Zwelithini’s UDI from Buthelezi last year, however, the monarch has sought his own international allies and, it appears, has begun to carve out his own niche on the continent. Seeking funds for his Peace and Development Trust, the monarch has travelled to Britain — where sources say he elicited promises for some R600-million in donations — and to Uganda and Ghana, where he put the much-vaunted Zulu Kingdom on the traditionalist map, holding court first with the king of the powerful Buganda tribe and now with the king of the Asante. Zwelithini’s lawyer, S’dumo Mathe, said the monarch also gained an audience with Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings.
These forays, combined with the monarch’s new open-door policy which has led to unencumbered meetings with several other groups within South Africa, have largely occurred without the blessing of the provincial government, whose complaint over the monarch’s failure to “consult” it hark back to the days when Zwelithini needed the KwaZulu homeland government’s approval to leave the district of Nongoma.
Observers note that Zwelithini’s successes would be seen as challenging the parallel initiatives dawning on the horizon of the IFP’s ethnicist agenda. Buthelezi has notably made several recent trips to visit the Ndebele in Zimbabwe in his role as Home Affairs Minister, and his attempts to garner support among the Pondos and the Tswana in the pre-election period are common cause. More recently, Buthelezi has suggested that other provinces — and other traditional leaders – – would one day follow his lead in calling for greater provincial autonomy, an event which would certainly hold Buthelezi’s greatest hopes for becoming a national leader.
In this context, Zwelithini’s overseas trips, his unrequited demand that Kwa-Zulu-Natal Premier Frank Mdlalose apologise for last year’s Shaka Day fiasco, his call for local government representation in the Senate and his unapologetic support for the centralisation of traditional leaders’ payment — not to mention the still unmeasured emotive impact of his divorce from the IFP — present potential obstacles to IFP growth.
Already, sources say, some business leaders who previously supported the IFP have now turned their attention to the monarch’s non-partisan development aspirations. The R270 000 donated to his Trust by the Education Development Trust and computers and other equipment donated by business leaders at Zwelithini’s birthday bash in Nongoma two weeks ago, seem to support the claims.
With some IFP sources claiming the party is in dire financial straits, observers have suggested it is sorely missing the monarch’s fund-raising potential. One Zulu royal source claimed he was party to a clandestine pre-election campaign by the party which raised some R35-million in overseas donations on behalf of the king — but without his knowledge. The source alleged the funds had been channelled directly into IFP
Politically, as the IFP attempts to rally support for its “provincial constitution”, the monarch’s absence from the fold has not gone unnoticed. Although the IFP minimised the loss of Zwelithini last year, hard-core traditionalist supporters still sing songs at rallies asking the king to come back to them. While it is difficult to tie the lower attendance at IFP rallies since the election to the monarch’s departure, the confusion of older traditionalists loyal to both the IFP and the king could present an electoral obstacle to the party’s efforts to bolster its paper-thin majority through fresh provincial elections.
Some IFP sources believe the only way out of the quagmire is to place a new head on the “headless” Zulu nation, by isolating the monarch from his subjects and possibly even calling for his replacement. The sources say the imbizo could see calls for IFP KwaZulu-Natal social welfare minister Prince Gideon Zulu to take the
ANC sources say attempts to isolate and discredit the monarch have already been made, pointing to Mdlalose’s refusal to fund the monarch’s Ghanaian trip, his public declaration that Zwelithini had spent some R16-million last year, and a recent claim by the IFP-owned Ilanga newspaper that Royal House spokesman Prince Sifiso Zulu had committed the “supreme crime”. In Zulu custom, this implies Zulu had an affair with one of the king’s wives. Zulu is suing Ilanga over the report.