A South African traditional king of Nelson Mandela’s Thembu ethnic group on Wednesday started serving a 12-year prison sentence for arson, kidnapping and assault of his subjects.
King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo spent his first night in jail on Wednesday after failing in his 11th-hour bid to evade incarceration by seeking a retrial or a presidential pardon.
The controversial king was six years ago convicted of manslaughter, arson and assault charges for offenses committed more than two decades ago.
Photo: AP
He was sentenced to 15 years in 2009, but he went on to appeal, resulting in the Supreme Court reducing his sentence to 12 years after it dropped the culpable homicide charge.
On Wednesday, he sought to urgently extend his bail, but a High Court judge in Mthatha, the largest city near Mandela’s rural home of Qunu, threw out the request.
“The application is refused,” Judge Nozuko Mjali said.
The 51-year-old, a self-confessed marijuana smoker, was found guilty of torching dwellings that housed some of his subjects and tenants who had resisted his eviction orders.
In another case, he was convicted of publicly assaulting three young men who had already been brutally beaten by some of his henchmen for alleged rape, housebreaking and theft.
He was also found guilty of kidnapping a wife and children of one of his subjects, who he considered a dissident.
The Supreme Court had concluded that the king “ruled with fear and trepidation” and that “his behavior was all the more deplorable because the victims of his reign of terror were the vulnerable rural poor.”
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