​​If there is one minuscule advantage to fiscus-draining monarchies it is that they spare us a subscription to entertainment platforms. Forget Real Housewives or The Crown, “Real Royalty” is where it all gets really down and dirty.

The British monarchy has, for centuries, entertained and enthralled the masses with outré costumery, medals, theatre, murdered kings and princes, bloodthirsty queens and an occasional leak of tawdry and embarrassingly immature telephone sex tapes.

Our own newly enthroned Zulu monarch, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini, at present finds himself in a spot of personal bother that has spilled beyond the palace walls. So much so, the king has reportedly gone to ground.

But, rather than wishing he was a feminine hygiene product (King Charles once told Queen Camilla when she was still his mistress that he would love to be a tampon), our king allegedly, apparently, went in straight for the buttock squeeze.

A private audience

Some background might be needed, as there is a suspicion that many avid royal watchers among us are inclined to forget the majestic domestic dramas unfolding under our own noses in our own country.

Last weekend, the Sunday papers brought to light that the young King Misuzulu had “gone into hiding” as a result of some sort of “personal scandal”. Some sort of charge, a case of intimidation, has been lodged at Douglasdale Police Station as a result. We’ll see how far that goes.

It turns out His Highness, allegedly desperate for an heir, approached “an activist who fights to end gender violence” who had attended the annual reed dance at Enyokeni, the Royal Palace in Nongoma.

The “activist” disclosed to City Press that the King’s aunt had summoned her, whispering that His Majesticness sought a private audience.

Here’s where royal protocols seem to have gone out the window.

“They took me to see the King. It was in a boardroom with glass. I walkin’ in and took off my shoes [mmm, ok], but I was limping [oh sorry] because I was wearing a brace.”

There before her, she alleges, stood the Zulu King, whom she greeted. He replied: “What a beautiful babe, come here and hug me”.

And then, she said, “He started squeezing my buttocks.”

It was quite a move for a royal who had just met the possible mother of his future heir, as the story suggested. After they had been “intimate”, the King allegedly took his mistress to a laboratory for a “fertility test”.

You want more? Sure, there’s more, always is.

Page through Spare, the outcast brother to William future king of England’s tell-all exercise in practising private therapy in public. Delicious.

City Press claimed it had actual audio recordings of the Zulu King in which he complains about his wife, Queen Ntokozo Mayisela-Zulu. The couple has two sons. She has since reportedly moved out.

Fair enough, Charles could not stop complaining about Diana and she also moved out.

“She doesn’t act like a Queen and I need to find another one”.

Could have been Prince Charles a few years ago.

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Anyhow, things for our king turned sour in December, it is reported, when the royal house released a statement referring to the activist and his alleged mistress as “an intruder” who was trying to curry favour with the monarchy.

Soon afterwards the activist alleged that she began to receive death threats.

How very KZN.

In the meantime, South Africa’s “Harry”, Prince Simakade Zulu, who has asked for public donations to challenge his brother’s legitimacy in court, in his own mind remains the true king.

The prince delivered a speech a while back and crowned himself by “entering the kraal” by himself.

During the 2022 Reed Dance ceremony King Misuzulu offered an olive branch to his relative, his brother – unlike King Charles and future king William.

This is how you do it, people.

King Charles III, sit back and be schooled.

“I still insist that home is home. They must come back home. They will bow and call me their brother even when they don’t like it. We always talk about the issue of accepting (the reality), but they must now accept (this reality over the throne). We harbour no grudge against them, (and) we wish no evil upon them, even though they are always wishing evil things (on us).

“We are waiting for them to come back to occupy their seats. The seats are still empty after they vacated them. They must come back to take them,” the official Zulu King said.

Royal budgets and estates

Our Zulu monarch chows some R66-million in taxpayer’s money and it is about time we got more bang for our buck. Travelling to KwaZulu-Natal is challenging for tourists at the moment, so that’s out.

Perhaps some cams in the palace, live-streaming. Millions would watch, it would be great for the country and it would keep us grounded and aware that kings and queens, just like their counterparts everywhere, are a right royal pain in the collective arse.

I don’t mean any disrespect. King Misuzulu looks so much like his father, King Zwelithini, that it brings a sense of nostalgia, to say nothing about visual continuity. Every now and again he looks as lost as Bambi.

The same cannot be said for British royalty, although William is a dead ringer for his mother, Diana, the woman who would never be queen. The Guardian reported in 2022, after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, her estate included land that “dates back as far as 1066 and the Norman conquest of Britain”.

Try to lodge a land claim in that neck in the woods and see what happens. Anyhow, since 1760 the monarch had “allowed the estate’s net income to be surrendered to the government. This funding arrangement came about under George III, who agreed to hand over the income in return for a fixed annual payment, now called the sovereign grant.”

For 2021/22 this was set at £86.3-million (about R1-billion) which represented a mere £1.29 per person in the UK.

Our King Misuzulu is the sole trustee of the Ingonyama Trust established in 1994 by the then KwaZulu-Natal government and which owns 2.8 million hectares of land in the province.

In 2011, however, the Pietermaritzburg High Court issued a game-changing judgment for communities living on  land held under the King’s trusteeship.

The court confirmed that individuals and communities, and not the Ingonyama Trust or the Ingonyama, were the “true and ultimate owners” of the land.

Prior to this, mining companies, who have torn up the environment in places, had refused to negotiate with affected land-rights holders or to pay compensation for the loss of land.

They acted as if the land belonged to the Ingonyama Trust and entered into lease agreements with it, excluding those whose land rights had been affected.

See how far advanced we are, fellow compatriots.

Meanwhile, we wish our King and the royal household well in these trying times. Bayete, if I may address you sire. Remember each day, when you look in the mirror, to thank the ancestors you are not King Charles III. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.