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His political clout would be forged in the KwaZulu "Bantustan" one of the so-called self-governing homelands based on tribal affiliation - islands of rural poverty where most Black South Africans were literally confined under apartheid.

During apartheid, he was the chief minister of the KwaZulu Bantustan: a semi-independent territory allocated to the Zulu people by the country's white supremacist government.

But the king did appear to reach an accommodation with the apartheid government who recognised him as a figurehead in the Zulu bantustan.

“And it will solidify not the creation of a Palestinian state, but the completion of a Palestinian Bantustan, an archipelago of disconnected islands of territory, completely surrounded and divided up by Israel and unconnected to the outside world.”

Such a move would violate international law and leave what would amount to "a Palestinian Bantustan", they warned.