MODERN SOLOMON

Hokitika Guardian, 27 May 1933, Page 7

MODERN SOLOMON

PASSION FOR MOTOR-CARS LITIGATION AS A HOBBY Solomon, the King of the Zulus, is dead. He was only 34. He leaves 15 widows. He was the most envied black man in Africa, and he had modern ideas. The Government allowed this monarch £SOOO a year, and this enabled him to indulge in his ruling passion—-motor-cars. He was the first native to buy a motor-car, and after the joy of possessing one nothing could hold him back. He bought car after car—RollsRoyces and others. He insisted on a white chauffeur, and he loved speed. He bought so many cars at pne time that he fell in debt. That rather curbed his passion, and he had only six cars at the time of his death.

King Solomon always held his court dressed in an omnibus conductor’s cap, a blue suit with gold braid trimmed with leopard skin and a leopard skin girdle. He carried a large sword and had hundreds cf them. If he could not carry a sword he carried an umbrella. Litigation was another, great love. At. the slightest excuse the king would send for his favourite lawyer—a white man—and open a lawsuit. He lost many, and once, tVhen he won a libel action he declared a national holiday among his people. A favourite recreation was. shopping in Durban. The king had such a bad reputation among the white traders, however, that they always refused to give him credit. When he had enough cash he would first buy a car, then a gaudy uniform, and then a sword—or an umbrella.

On one of these shopping expeditions he saw a porcelain bath. He had never seen a bath before, and its use had to bo explained to him. He bought it and had it conveyed with great ceremony to one of his eight kraals. There it was installed in the royal hut, and every night and morning Solomon seriously took a bath. Wherever this modern Solomon went the natives flocked around him, cheering madly—he was their king. 'When ever he visited a town the natives would leave their work and run to his car. The police at first diverted his procession to the hack streets, but the congestion became so great that lio one was able to move. After that the. royal car was allowed to take the • main streets, and the king’s adoring subjects held up the traffic.

Solomon was the ■ most ! powerful native in Africa. He despised the ways of his great ancestor Cetawayp, ; who fought the British, yet, because of his blood he could have raised a . great army in a week. He Wfis converted bv a missionary. The death of this king, who hat AT the loincloth of his, fathers, and dressecT himself inEhropean musical comedy clothes, signifies the passing of the last influential native, ruler in that territory.