Durban - Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has vehemently denied that he said people should take up arms and attack foreign nationals.
The king was addressing a peace imbizo at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Monday and called upon the Zulu nation to protect foreign nationals and not to attack them.
“The war I want you to take part in, is war of protecting foreign nationals, no matter from which country,” he said. He said that if he had said there should be war, South Africa would have been in ashes.
King Zwelithini said a third force was to blame for the violent attacks directed at foreign nationals. “There is a third force that we need to fight against, it is the cause of all this,” he said. The monarch said the imbizo was called, not because Zulus were the instigators of violence, but because there was a need to protect the already tarnished image of the Zulu nation.
Earlier, speakers at the imbizo said King Zwelinthini had been unfairly blamed for the xenophobic violence in South Africa which has left at least seven people dead and displaced thousands.
ANA