{"id":43066,"date":"2021-03-12T10:32:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T10:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-africa-s-zulu-king-goodwill-zwelithini-dies-aged-72\/"},"modified":"2021-03-12T10:31:57","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T10:31:57","slug":"south-africa-s-zulu-king-goodwill-zwelithini-dies-aged-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-africa-s-zulu-king-goodwill-zwelithini-dies-aged-72\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini dies aged 72"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The king wielded great influence among millions of Zulus through his largely ceremonial and spiritual role despite having no official power in modern South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is with the utmost grief that I inform the nation of the passing of His Majesty King Goodwill Zwelithini &#8230; King of the Zulu nation,&#8221; the palace said a statement signed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a powerful veteran politician who is also a Zulu prince.<\/p>\n<p>The king was admitted to hospital last month for diabetes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Tragically, while still in hospital, His Majesty\u2019s health took a turn for the worse and he subsequently passed away in the early hours of this morning,&#8221; the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Born in Nongoma, a small town in the south-eastern Kwa-Zulu Natal province, Zwelithini ascended the throne in 1971 during the apartheid era at the age of 23, three years after the death of his father.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-38062 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/2-121.jpg\" alt=\"Eswatini King Mswati III (right) is joined by his brother-in-law Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini (left) for the celebration of his 30th birthday on September 6, 1998. Photo File AFP  \" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Goodwill Zwelithini, the controversial but revered king of South Africa&#8217;s Zulus, died Friday aged 72 after weeks in hospital, his palace announced. } <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-43066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43066"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=43066"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=43066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}