Now the most famous Xhosa aristocrat since Nelson Mandela, Chief Nicholas Gcaleka could be carrying an unusual item of hand luggage when he leaves Scotland for South Africa this week.
A practising sangoma or witch doctor, Chief Gcaleka made world headlines two weeks ago when he boarded a South African Airways flight for Britain, dressed in his traditional garb and accompanied by an 11 strong retinue.
His mission, which came to him in a dream, was to go to Scotland and find the skull of his forbear King Hintsa, the last of the Xhosa high kings.
Hintsa came to an ignominious end in the "Sixth Kaffir War" of 1835, when British forces from the Cape Colony seized him during negotiations and then killed and mutilated him as he tried to escape.
Local Xhosa tradition has it that the head was removed by a Scottish army scout and taken to Britain as a trophy. The taking of trophies usually ears was encouraged by a bounty system that awarded frontier soldiers for each Xhosa they killed.
Chief Gcaleka made his journey to Scotland as a result of a vision which, he said, gave him clues to the skull's whereabouts. South Africa would never be at peace until Hintsa's head was returned.
His theories could be soon be put to the test last Saturday, Chief Gcaleka was taken to a highland estate near Inverness "and shown an old skull which he immediately proclaimed to be that of the dead king. The skull, dug up near a labourer's cottage about 60 years ago, even had a hole that could have been made by the musket ball that is said to have killed Hintsa.
It remains to be seen whether the skull will now be tested to see if it could indeed be that of a long dead, elderly Xhosaman. The chief is a colourful character and knows a good story when he sees one.
Landing in a 12C Glasgow in his Eastern Cape garb, Chief Gcaleka told reporters that he was acting on the advice of spirits.
But if Chief Gcaleka is something of a showman, his quest is part of a broader, more serious movement that has emerged in southern Africa with the demise of apartheid.
Academics and organisations representing indigenous people are increasingly clamouring for the restoration of human relics removed from their country during the colonial era. Many western museums do possess human artifacts.
A case in point is the sad story of Saartjie Baartman, "the Hottentot Venus".
Baartman was a member of the Khoi Khoi ("Hottentot") herding people who, like their San or "Bushman" cousins, inhabited much of southern Africa before the whites and Negroid Africans arrived.
In 1810, she was taken to Europe at the age of about 30 and exhibited as a freak for several years Khoi khoi ("Hottentot") women tended to have protuberant buttocks and labia, which were said to hang several inches below the body. Then the crowned heads of Europe grew tired at inspecting her private parts she was discarded, and died in Paris in 1815 an alcoholic prostitute.
Her skeleton and genitalia were preserved, however, and were displayed in the Paris Museum of Human Science until 10 years ago, when they were put into storage. Now South Africa wants them back.
Behind the campaign is an organisation called the Griqua National Conference, which claims to represent the interests of the Khoisan, a generic name for the diverse Khoi Khoi and Bushman peoples.
Both groups are now effectively extinct in South Africa only a few bands of bushmen remain in the far north and the Khoi Khoi have been entirely subsumed into the Cape Province's mixed race or "coloured" populations.
Nevertheless, the Minister for Arts, Science and Culture, Mr Ben Ngubane, has taken up their case with the French government and is hopeful of success.
Mr Ngubane recently told the visiting French Minister of Co operation, Mr Jacques Godfrain, that following the end to apartheid South Africa had entered a period of healing and the restoration of dignity.
"The process would not be complete while Saartjie Baartman's remains are still kept in a museum," he said.
In another case that came to light recently, a South African artist discovered several preserved Bushman heads in a British museum there are now calls for their return as well.
The response of western museums to these calls has been lukewarm so far. While proponents of change in the international museum community are questioning the educational or scientific value of such collections in the world of multimedia display and genetic sequencing, their opponents argue that body parts must still be collected and retained for examination in the name of anthropology.
And there is a third argument that probably weighs more heavily than either of these. If France and Britain were to return Khoisan artifacts to South Africa, they would only strengthen the case for the return of prized mummy exhibits to Egypt, for example, or the Elgin marbles to Greece.
. The board of Potgietersrus primary school in the Northern Transvaal has decided to drop a constitutional appeal against the admission of black pupils. Last week, the parent body which governs the all white, mainly Afrikaner school was ordered by a court to admit 21 black pupils it had refused to enrol on "cultural grounds".
Yesterday the school's representatives said they were dropping the case pending a national forum on minority education, suggested by President Nelson Mandela.