Zuma: Government Will Mediatise Six of South Africa’s Monarchies

The wasteful and useless king of the Zulu people is a profligate example how silly and expensive this synthetic construction is. South Africa is a republic, and a nation of equals. That is what it proudly claims to be. Its monarchs and princelings (in reality petty chieftains and headmen)are profligate anachronisms in a country that trumpets itself the most progressive in Africa. The House of Traditional Leaders and the traditional leaders themselves are an immoral waste of taxpayers money. South Africa has failing schools, collapsing hospitals, a degraded road system and infrastructure, incessant high levels of crime, idle and corrupt politicians and an inefficient, almost moribund civil service, yet it squanders public money on and extends unmerited privilege to these preposterous men and women.

The mere existence of royalty is not, ipso facto, waste. Show me the people who has democratized away crime or bad roads.

I am not sure whether S.Pietersen is remarking on my comment or making a separate one. If he is remarking about my comment, I am not criticising constitutional monarchies. I am criticising the waste of taxpayers money on people who have no constitutional function in a a republican democracy, in a country where all citizens are legal equals. These grade inflated chiefs and headmen are paid for being being born with an hereditary status and give nothing serious back to South Africa in return. The king of the Zulus with his many wives, his palaces and cars, his horde of children, all of whom were educated at expensive private schools, is paid millions every year by the taxpayers of South Africa to lead this extravagant existence. His priviledged and quite useless life is extended to other “traditional leaders” by the government and is an expensive indulgence a country like South Africa can ill afford.

Mediatization in a republic. Only in Africa or the Polish Commonwealth.