MBABANE: The office of Zulu King Misuzulu kaZwelithini has refuted a claim that he was rushed to hospital in eSwatini after having taken ill on Saturday, the Mail and Guardian reported on Tuesday afternoon.
In a statement released on Sunday, the king’s head of communications, Prince Africa Zulu, said that the monarch remained “in perfect health” and that he had merely undergone a medical examination while paying a visit to King Mswati.
“This was informed by the context of our current times of pandemics such as Covid-19 and other dangerous ailments.”
This comes after the king’s induna Douglas Xaba recently died. “His Majesty’s office decided to err on the side of caution and ensure that all possible impediments were tested, in order to mitigate against any untimely eventuality, given the reports of Mr. Xaba’s sudden passing.”
Reports of the king’s illness followed a statement from Mangosuthu Buthelezi — the traditional prime minister to the Zulu monarch and the founder of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) — expressing “great concern” over news he received from King Mswati’s brother, Prince Vumile.
“I am informed that his majesty’s senior induna, Mr Xaba, who stayed with the king, passed on quite suddenly and that there are suspicions that he was poisoned. When His Majesty began to feel unwell, he suspected that he too may have been poisoned,” Buthelezi’s statement read, later expressing concern for the king’s recovery.The king’s office, however, suggested that the claim of his hospitalisation appears to be part of “an orchestrated agenda and a desperate narrative to communicate defamatory and baseless claims of his majesty’s ill health”.
King Misuzulu(pic:sourced form M&G).