24 January 2010

Tribal king declares secession from South Africa

This hasn't received much attention outside of SA:

On 14 January 2010, the king of the tribe Nelson Mandela belongs to served a secession notice on the South African Parliament. Only weeks after being sentenced by a South African court of law to fifteen years in jail for culpable homicide, kidnapping, arson, and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm (all charges dating back to an event in 1995), the lawyer of King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo declared that the abaThembu tribe would now form the independent state of Thembuland.

According to media reports, the new state – to be headed by the king who is out on bail – may comprise as much as sixty-five percent of current South Africa, in line with the pre-colonial boundaries of the tribe's land, including all of the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, parts of Gauteng and the Free State, as well as the cities of Johannesburg and Durban. The king's supporters claim abaThembu to be South Africa's largest tribe with more than ten million members.

Dalindyebo – who is better known by his praise name, Zwelibanzi – is one of a handful of rightful monarchs in South Africa and a former operative of the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), in Angola. Only the more surprising, then, that his legal team accuses the ANC government of a political trial aimed at replacing Dalindyebo with a puppet king.

South Africa, whose constitution attributes tribal kings a largely ceremonial role, neighbours two constitutional monarchies, Lesotho and Swaziland.

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