South Africa: Tribal king arrested for palace rampage

By Hassan Isilow

JOHANNESBURG (AA) - A local South African king was arrested on Friday after an early morning rampage at the royal palace of the AbaThembu tribe, local media reported.

King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, 56, who is a nephew of South Africa’s late revolutionary leader Nelson Mandela, was released from prison last December.

According to local media reports, he was arrested again on Friday morning after breaking into the palace armed with weapons, including an axe, to attack his son, acting King Azenathi Dalindyebo.

Prince Zanothando Dalindyebo, Buyelekhaya’s brother, told South African media outlet Eyewitness News that the former king “jumped over the locked gate” to enter the Bumbhane Royal Palace.

“He came to our home, at the Bumbhane Royal Palace, and jumped over the locked gate to gain access to the yard and then proceeded to the residence where the king resides and broke a window in the sitting room and gained access into the house,” he told Eyewitness News.

He said Buyelekhaya entered the palace armed with an axe, machete, and bush knife.

The acting king was reported to have escaped through a window, but his wife was injured in the attack.

“The acting king is injured, as we speak, while he was fleeing the attack. His wife, Kumkanikazi Skhumbulile Dalindyebo, is injured and other people are traumatized,” the prince said.

This is not King Buyelekhaya’s first run-in with the law. In December 2015, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for kidnapping, assault, arson, and homicide.

The crimes that saw him jailed dated back to some two decades.

He was jailed for ordering the kidnapping of a woman and her six children, setting their home on fire, and beating up four young people, one of whom died, after one of their relatives failed to appear before a traditional court.

King Buyelekhaya ascended to the throne in 1989 and has around 700,000 subjects. He was the first monarch to be jailed in post-apartheid South Africa.

South Africa has 10 officially recognized kingdoms representing various tribes, whose leaders play largely ceremonial roles and settle minor disagreements.