We are, most of us in this fair land, subjects of the AbaThembu kingdom – according to a declaration of secession presented to Parliament recently.
If this comes as a surprise to the good folk of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape and parts of Gauteng and the Free State – who are all claimed as part of the independent AbaThembu kingdom – it’s been a hugely compelling issue in the Eastern Cape recently, not least for the AbaThembus whose most famous son is Nelson Mandela.
It’s been an amusing topic of discussion in the Eastern part of the province and, for the past month, the letters pages of the East London-based Daily Dispatch newspaper have been filled with strident views on the secession attempt and its apparent leader, King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo.
Talk of secession, whether it comes from Texas or the Isle of White, is compelling in today’s world as it seems so loony. And Dalindyebo, who is Mandela’s clan nephew, is a colourful and controversial figure of the first order. He has a talent for dramatic gesture and has made headlines for years, from public spats with the Matanzimas over who is the rightful AbaThembu king to claiming in court papers that Mandela led an ANC coup to unseat him in 2002.
However, Dalindyebo is also a very influential traditional leader. Not only are the AbaThembus an important Xhosa royal family, but the king has political blue blood as Dalindyebo’s father, Sabata, chose exile over the apartheid government’s Bantustan policy. King Sabata Dalindyebo, after whom the Mthatha municipal area is named, was no National Party stooge.
The fact that it took about a decade to bring the current king to trial in the Mthatha High Court last year for a raft of serious crimes – including kidnapping, culpable homicide, arson and assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm – shows just how influential he is.
Dalindyebo was sentenced in October last year to 15 years for his crimes. They included ordering in 1995 that one of his subjects be beaten up as well as ordering the kidnapping of a mother and her children after the woman’s husband failed to pay a fine Dalindyebo had given him.
Then in December Votani Majola, Dalindyebo’s lawyer and head of The King Dalindyebo Justice Task Team, demanded that the state compensate the AbaThembu nation R80-billion and the royal family R900-million for the humiliation suffered as a result of Dalindyebo’s criminal conviction. Failure to do so would result in the nation seceding, charged Majola.
Majola served notice on President Jacob Zuma’s office and the National Prosecuting Authority about the intention to secede and then, on January 14, a declaration of secession was given to Parliament. Parliament has confirmed it has received the declaration but said it was not sure such an issue fell within its jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Majola threw down the gauntlet and told the Daily Dispatch last month: “I served the notice on 14 January. We have officially cut ties with South Africa and we are no longer South African.”
Dalindyebo is a wily political player and has been careful to make no pronouncements on the issue but his spokesperson, Phumla Matshaya, has confirmed that the king was aware that Majola had served notice on Parliament. “Votani is working with us,” said Matshaya. “He has done his research. He is not a crazy man and he got his act together.”
Well, we AbaThembu subjects are relieved to hear the good lawyer is not completely potty. But there are serious questions raised by this peculiar turn of events. Is this a looming constitutional crisis or is Dalindyebo South Africa’s answer to Mad King George? And how should the government and the ANC respond?
It must certainly be embarrassing to Zuma and the ANC’s national leaders, who have always treaded softly around the Eastern Cape kings. The Eastern Cape is the ANC’s historical and political heartland and the ANC’s OR Tambo region – which encompasses Mthatha – is the party’s biggest voting region. Further, Zuma went out of his way to court the traditional leaders of the region prior to being elected ANC president in 2008 and the 2009 national election.
My guess is that this a tricky little hot potato that no one wants to react to officially. The presidency referred me to the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs on the matter. The Dispatch reported that that department stated it would intervene only if Dalindyebo approached it.
Until now the king’s chief advisers have distanced themselves from Majola’s claims.
At a meeting – that included the king and Patekile Holomisa, the president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa – of AbaThembu leaders and ordinary people at the king’s Bumbane Great Place in Mthatha two weeks ago, a decision was taken to help find funding for the king’s appeal against his convictions but the issue of secession was not discussed.
The media were barred from the meeting but Holomisa said afterwards that the issue of secession would be discussed at another meeting scheduled for later in February.
The Johannesburg-based Majola told me that he was not at the meeting but he would proceed with the secession process. “Secession was decided as early as December…The issue of secession is on and we are continuing to proceed,” he said, adding that his task team wanted the process to be peaceful.
Majola said that his task team were in the process of consulting the people on the ground in the Transkei and, after that, the next step would be formal engagement with the government. Provinces such as the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were included in the claim, he said, because these were the pre-colonial lands of the AbaThembu.
Bantu Holomisa, the leader of the United Democratic Movement and one-time leader of the Transkei homeland, said Transkeians will not take this seriously until they are consulted on the matter. But he also believed that Zuma and the ANC national leaders must be shocked and embarrassed by the turn of events from such a prominent king.
The ANC is probably using its influence on the ground to put a halt to the secession attempt, says Bantu Holomisa, so the upshot of the today’s meeting will be intriguing.
There are those who believe that this is a serious issue. Pierre de Vos, a law professor at the University of Western Cape who runs a successful blog, has warned that if the king and his lawyer act on the threat in anyway, they could be charged with treason. “There is always a thin line between expressing a wish and acting on a wish,” De Vos told the Dispatch. “Once they start encouraging people to be disobedient towards the state they will be threatening the security of the state.”
However, Professor Stephen Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, says that in the practical world of politics, Dalindyebo is not going to be tried for treason.
Whatever the outcome of the meeting later this month, we can be certain that Dalindyebo is not going to step quietly off the stage. He has been granted leave to appeal his sentence and the Mthatha High Court has also granted the state leave to appeal the sentence on a culpable homicide charge – so it can up the charge to murder.
It seems Dalindyebo is determined to use everything in his arsenal to avoid a jail term so the ANC government hasn’t seen the last of the troublesome king.
* A version of this article appeared frist in Business Day.
* See also the Dispatch report on one of its reporters receiving threatening phone calls over the secession story.
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