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Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has appealed to mourners to respect and follow Covid-19 regulations as they pay tribute to Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini.
Mourners have been flocking to KwaKhethomthandayo Royal Palace in Nongoma. The king’s amabutho (warriors) and izimbali zesizwe (flowers of the nation) are among them.
King Zwelithini (72) died in hospital on March 12 due to Covid-19 complications. His body is expected to arrive at the palace on Wednesday afternoon before his private burial ceremony takes place tonight.
The monarch’s memorial service will take place on Thursday and President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver the eulogy. His body will not lie in state for viewing as has been tradition.
READ: Analysis | King Goodwill Zwelithini: Apartheid’s useful idiot
Mkhize said that health workers and police were deployed to the palace to monitor compliance with regulations, and that the provincial government provided masks. The minister said that he was satisfied with the availability of sanitisers and seating arrangements.
“The team here is trying to monitor compliance. As you know, if it were not for Covid-19, there would be thousands of people here. We know that this is unusual in terms of our culture, but we appeal to people to respect the regulations,” Mkhize said.
“Messages have been sent to everybody, including those people leading amabutho. We encourage people to mourn in their homes. Everybody does understand but it will be difficult to contain numbers and keep social distancing,” he added.
At the memorial service, only 100 people will be allowed, in order to comply with Covid-19 regulations.
The people of Nongoma are expected to come out in their numbers on to the streets to witness as the king’s body is fetched from the mortuary.
Not an executive king
King Zwelithini ruled for 50 years under both the apartheid and democratic systems of South Africa. He was the longest serving Zulu king in history.
READ: Mondli Makhanya: End the kneeling. Let’s call King Zwelithini’s bluff
University of KwaZulu-Natal political sociology Emeritus Professor Gerhard Maré this week wrote: “By the time of his death King Zwelithini was firmly established, not as executive king, but certainly as powerful Ingonyama Trust landholder.”
Maré asked why, during apartheid and beyond, politicians and economic interests rushed to show support for this “king of goodwill”, as his authorised biographers punned. “Why was his actual, and not just symbolic, landlordship ensured, at the last minute, under apartheid by the Ingonyama Trust, which placed all KwaZulu land under King Zwelithini as the only trustee? And why was this confirmed in the democratic period?
“It is because such undemocratic centralised power is too big a temptation for those who seek to benefit. Access to – and manipulation of – such power explains the cynically justified acceptance over half a century of his political influence and ideological authority by politicians and capitalists. It enabled human and material exploitation through association, control over people as workers, justification for exclusion, votes from a specific group, and, more recently, access to what lies beneath the land on which the subjects live,” explained Maré.
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