The emergence of South Africa into an era of majority rule in 1994 was accompanied by a constitution that enshrined a wide range of equalities – not just racial equality, but gender equality and recognition of diverse sexual orientations. It was highly modern in its range, but all the same enshrined the position of traditional monarchs. Thus King Goodwill Zwelithini of the Zulu nation, who has died aged 72, was made part of a modern South Africa, while representing an old lineage and old practice.

The recognition in particular of the Zulu king was important in that the four years of negotiation, from Nelson Mandela’s release to the achievement of elections under universal franchise, were marked not just by black/white racial unease, but by Zulu/ANC communal violence in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast. Pogroms and slaughters by Zulu militants, and the reprisal attacks that followed, marked the unease of a process in which traditionally powerful communities sought not to be marginalised in the new dispensation. Recognition of the Zulu king, and the inclusion at a high level of Jacob Zuma, a Zulu himself, in the ANC cabinet – Thabo Mbeki appointed him deputy president in 1999 – helped to assuage these fears.