Cape Town: In his royal leopard skin regalia, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini conjures up Hollywood images of his once-feared tribe and the legendary warrior-king Shaka, his direct ancestor.
Zwelithini has no official power in modern South Africa, but he still commands loyalty among some 10 million Zulu people, and critics who blame him for an outbreak of xenophobic violence say that his words can kill.
In a speech last month Zwelithini said immigrants were responsible for rising crime and demanded that they leave the country -- an outburst followed by a spate of attacks on migrants from other African countries that left seven dead and thousands displaced.
Under intense pressure from the government and civil society to calm the situation, the king on Monday denied whipping up hatred -- saying he had been misinterpreted -- and condemned the violence as "shameful".
Zwelithini, 66, is the most prominent among some 10 kings who play a largely symbolic role in the democratic republic established in 1994 under Nelson Mandela -- who was himself born into the Thembu royal family.
They are recognised in the constitution as traditional leaders and supported in relative luxury by the government -- with Zwelithini last year being allocated more than R50 million ($4.1 million), according to local media.
While some taxpayers might resent the cost, support for Zwelithini is firmly entrenched among his rural subjects and his role is seen -- somewhat ironically given the outbreak of xenophobia -- as essential to peace.
In the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 Zwelithini's province, KwaZulu Natal, was wracked by violence between supporters of the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party and Mandela's African National Congress.
"This made the new government particularly concerned not to antagonise the king and his supporters for fear of triggering more violence," says Steven Friedman, director of the centre for the study of democracy at the University of Johannesburg.
"The perks which he receives could therefore be viewed as an attempt to prevent that violence. If keeping the king in relative luxury is the price which must be paid for saving lives, it is worth paying."
University of South Africa analyst Somadoda Fikeni agrees.
"Remember that when some of these areas were conquered by colonial government people never stopped recognising their kings and their chiefs as their authority.
"These institutions do not depend on government recognition alone and therefore a government which wants to assume a greater effective control and have peace has to work with them."
Fikeni points to efforts in other African countries, such as Mozambique, where incoming socialist governments tried to scrap traditional leaders only to be forced later to reinstate them.
But independent KwaZulu Natal-based analyst Protas Madlala dismisses tribal classifications.
"The architects of (apartheid) oppression skilfully disintegrated all of us, saying 'you are Zulu, you are Xhosa'.
"Some of us are trying to resist that, to say 'look we are a common nation, we are all South Africans'."
President Jacob Zuma is himself a Zulu and regularly swaps suits for full warrior gear, engaging in tribal dances during traditional ceremonies in his village.
He and the king also follow other traditional practices, such as polygamy -- each has married six times and has more than 20 children.
While there are again mutterings about the cost of supporting so many spouses of the powerful, Madlala points out that South Africa gets away easily compared to the impoverished taxpayers in neighbouring Swaziland.
There King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, has an annual household budget of around $60 million in a country where about 60 percent of the population live on less than $1 a day.
His government is regularly accused of stifling dissent and jailing opponents -- whereas the constitutional recognition granted to South Africa's kings is subject to their adherence to the country's human rights laws.
Zwelithini, a descendent of the all-powerful Shaka -- who ruled the Zulu nation until his assassination in 1828 -- appears to have recognised that by distancing himself from the violence meted out to foreigners.
