WHEN he was 23 years old Everson Xolo became nkosi (chief) of the Zulu clan of Xolo and its lands at KwaXolo, in the rolling hills of KwaZulu Natal's south coast region. Now approaching his 50th birthday he recalls how the first tribal law case he ever heard collapsed in hilarity when he tried to fine the malefactor a mere one rand. "One lousy rand!" he says with a laugh.
Today, the tribal court at KwaXolo stands empty and vandalised. Nkosi Xolo has not heard a case there since December 1993, when unidentified gunmen shot him eight times as he was driving away from a school fund raising meeting. Miraculously, he survived, but he was forced to take refuge in Durban and cannot yet go home.
Chief Xolo is yet another victim of the inter Zulu civil war which has killed 14,000 people in the province of KwaZulu Natal over the past decade. This struggle is portrayed as a conflict between the pro autonomy Inkatha Freedom Party - upholder of the Zulu monarchy, chieftaincy and traditional culture and the radical African National Congress, with its vision of a non racial non tribal South Africa. The strange thing is that Chief Xolo - a Zulu traditional leader staunch and true - is convinced his attackers were supporters of the IFP.
He believes he was shot because one of his last tribal cases also ended in a lenient fine. In July 1993 he refused to issue the chiefdom's three legally held assault rifles to a group of Inkatha hitmen intent on murdering a local youth. The youth, a supporter of the ANC, had been fined 100 rand (£20) by Nkosi Xolo for insulting an IFP elder, but the IFP wanted him dead.
Since the assassination attempt, Nkosi Xolo has become one of a handful of Zulu chiefs to join the ANC affiliated Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa: the other 300 odd Zulu chiefs remain loyal to the IFP.
The recent attack on female members of the Zulu royal family, in which the king's wife and daughter were injured and a cousin murdered, also appears to have been tried out by IFP supporters. Last week, police arrested nine residents of the IFP controlled building at KwaMashu outside Durban, where Princess Nonhlanhla's body was found. The IFP has frequently accused King Goodwill Zwelithini of being too close to the ANC.
With the ANC wooing Zulu chiefs and princes, and the IFP's supporters physically attacking them, it would be easy to conclude that the Zulu nation is falling apart, just as the IFP had feared. But the experts say that the truth is rather more complicated than that.
According to Mary de Haas, a social anthropologist at the University of Natal, the popular notion of Zulu unity is historically bogus, while much Zulu tradition - including the highly controversial carrying of "traditional weapons" by IFP supporters - is a recent invention. Even the Zulu identity is a colonial creation, she says.
Before the British arrived, the "Zulus" of Natal were a collection of over 200 autonomous tribes speaking related dialects of the Nguni language. Civil wars were frequent and bloody, and the "Zulu king" or paramount chief had little or no sway over many "Zulu speaking" tribes. More than half of those who died fighting for Britain at the famous battle of Islandwana were Zulu speaking blacks from the British colony of Natal.
"These were very fluid groupings," says Ms de Haas. "If you didn't like the chief you could up and go somewhere else, because land was always plentiful."
To Europeans, on the other hand, the Zulus have always been portrayed as the most formidable of African "warrior" nations, tightly bound together by the military genius of Shaka Zulu and immortalised by their heroic resistance to the British invasion of 1879. This perception of the Zulus has persuaded a significant number of sympathetic whites to join Chief Buthelezi's camp.
In line with apartheid era propaganda, many South African whites still chose to see the IFP's militant autonomy drive and covert use of violence as a response to the rise of the ANC, dominated by the Zulus' supposed "traditional enemies" from the Xhosa tribes. For them, as for the IFP, the civil war in KwaZulu Natal is nothing less than a struggle for the survival of the Zulu tradition.
For Ms de Haas, however, that tradition exists more in myth than in history. After the British crushed Zulu resistance they weakened the monarchy and changed the nature of traditional authority, making chiefs answerable to white magistrates and not to their own people. "Unoccupied" land was seized and movement controls introduced, binding the people to chiefs who were in some cases directly appointed by the British.
This system of "indirect rule" was extended under the National Party's "homeland" system of 1948 to 1994. The chiefs became little more than agents for the white government and the man who ruled over them was not the king but the KwaZulu homeland's chief minister, Chief Buthelezi, who later exercised royal authority through his claimed role of "traditional prime minister" to the Zulu nation.
According to Dr Paulus Zulu, a political science lecturer at the University of Natal, the social structure that Chief Buthelezi is fighting to preserve was created by the colonial and apartheid governments and is based on discredited notions of tribe and custom. "The chiefs' political power is derived from the state," he says. "It is not derived from the people."
Under apartheid, chiefs were still expected to regulate disputes, dispense justice (for minor crimes) and allocate land and they also had to provide schools and other services. But unlike local officials in "white" areas, they received little or no financial support from the central government. To this day the majority of amakhosi (plural of nkosi) live in relative poverty in remote areas. Few are well educated, some are illiterate; many do not even have electricity or a telephone.
Mr Bruce Walker, an official violence monitor whose territory includes KwaXolo, sees KwaZuluNatal's conflict as a generation war that has taken on political overtones. According to this theory, young Zulus from tribal areas, exposed to modern ideas through the media or through migration, came to find the discipline and authoritarianism of, traditional authority irksome, and duly rebelled.
The youths tended to drift towards the "modern" ANC, while the local chiefs and elders were drawn to the deeply conservative IFP. The result has been polarised communities, tit for tat murders and the deliberate burning out or massacre of dissidents.
The former apartheid security forces are alleged to have played a major part in fomenting the violence on the IFP side: the former defence minister, Gen Magnus Malan, is among those currently charged with organising hit squad murders of ANC sympathisers.
The issue of South Africa's 800 traditional leaders and their role in politics has never been hotter than at present. Local elections planned for KwaZulu Natal on May 29th hinge on the role of the chiefs in rural areas, where the IFP believes they should nominate at least 20 per cent of seats. Neither party is able to canvass freely in areas held by the other and President Mandela's government is considering postponing the poll following allegations of widespread irregularities in voters' rolls.
Most monitors in the province now expect political violence to increase, whether or not the poll goes ahead. The IFP, which has controlled the provincial government since the all race elections of 1994, is hinting at big trouble if the elections are postponed. The local ANC, on the other hand, is unlikely to be deterred from canvassing rural areas.
"The ANC has tried for many years to approach the tribal structures and they've been blocked at every turn," says Mr Walker. "They believe that that cost them the last election here. This time they are going to go ahead anyway, and it's going to lead to bloodshed."