Zwelithini and all the other pains in the royal butt

I had just squeezed off a frame of Princess Anne as she knelt to speak to some young children when my Pentax camera was swatted down.

I was grabbed by one of her close security men, with another in close attendance, and frogmarched away. “Give us your film! You are not allowed to take those pictures!”

I then learnt that it is, apparently, forbidden to take photos of any member of the royal family (the British one, that is) if they are wearing sunglasses. True story. Ask yourself: have you ever seen such a picture? Certainly, you never saw mine. They took the film and my boss wouldn’t let me submit a claim to the British High Commission in Harare, nor lay a charge of theft…

Of course, there was no reasoning with Her Majesty’s Thugs by saying that they were in my country (Zimbabwe) where their absurd rules should mean nothing … or that I, being of Irish descent, refused to accept any of them as having jurisdiction over me.

I had a similar encounter with another “royal” in the ’90s, when I was told I would get an “exclusive” interview with Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini (because I was working for the Sunday Tribune in Durban) on his return from a “fact-finding” mission to Israel to look at that country’s education system.

After all the other journalists had left after asking their bland education questions, I was granted an audience with the king. It was the week Nelson Mandela had gone to Durban and called on all people involved in violence to “throw their spears into the sea”, and I wanted to see what the king had to say. So I asked him. And he burst into an angry rant, personally attacking Mandela and implying that if he wanted a “war with the Zulus”, he would get it.

As I scribbled furiously, there was an angry scream from Ben Ngubane, the then minister of education in the KwaZulu homeland. “No! Stop! You may not ask His Majesty that question! You have come here under false pretences!”

As he escorted the king out of the room, I was attacked by the Zulu kingdom’s tame white PR woman, who also accused me of being devious. By the time I got back to the office, my worried editor, also in awe of the power of the Zulu nation, had been contacted.

I told him in no uncertain language that I was a journalist, not a PR person, and that kissing arse was not my style. In the end, what should have been a front-page lead story was a mere single column in the Trib.

The difference between the royal family and Zwelithini is that I don’t have to pay for Liz and the “family firm” (as some Brit tabloids refer to their royals); whereas I do have to for the Nongoma nobility. It has just been announced that Zwelithini will suck up another R66 million in taxpayer money in the coming year. That’s still not enough, according to his staff, because seven palaces and six cars (and goodness knows how many wives) are not cheap to sustain.

It is supremely ironic that a country whose leaders proclaim it wants to be fully “transformed”, throw off the trappings of colonialism and lead the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, can continue to fund such a parasitical system, all in the name of “preserving culture”.

My culture is Jennifer Aniston, disco music and turbocharged Subarus … and my annual subsidy to maintain that valuable heritage would be just 10% of what the king requires. Are you listening, Cyril?

Brendan Seery.

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