Votani Majola, lawyer for King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo of South Africa's AbaThembu Tribe, announced Jan. 24 that the tribal homeland—covering a vast area of the republic's territory—has seceded from the nation. "AbaThembu Tribe have seceded from South Africa," he told the press. "The sooner the nation aligns with this reality and start preparing to form the State of Thembuland the better."

Majola officially served a "secession notice" on Parliament last week, saying the new state would be headed by King Dalindyebo, and that South Africa's ANC-led government would have no sway over it.

Skeptics see a move to escape justice by the Dalindyebo, who was sentenced in the Mthatha High Court in December for a string of crimes including homicide, kidnapping, arson and assault. But Majola countered that the charges against Dalindyebo were part of an attempt to exterminate the AbaThembu people. "The ANC decided to embark on a route to criminalize our monarch in an effort to ensure that the Tribe of AbaThembu is completely extinguished from the surface of this earth just like dinosaurs," he said.

The new kingdom would include all of KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern, Western and Northern Cape provinces, as well as parts of Gauteng and the Free State, in line with the "pre-colonial boundaries" of the tribe's land. South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, would be part of the new state. (IOL, South Africa, Jan. 24; News 24, South Africa, Jan. 21)

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