Buyers of game reserve villas will feast with Zulu king

A GAME reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal is selling access to King Goodwill Zwelithini as a part of a package for buyers.

Along with a R20-million villa on the Thanda Royal Zulu Reserve, buyers will get to rub shoulders with the Zulu monarch at VIP functions and on royal hunting safaris.

A prospectus to market the villas says King Goodwill would need to approve buyers. “It is only at the express invitation of His Majesty . . . that the ability to purchase a royal residence will be conferred,” the prospectus says. The buyers will be given “exclusive access ” to the king.

But royal household spokesman Prince Mbonisi Zulu said he knew nothing about the deal.

“There are things that the king deals with personally. I can ’ t say whether that marketing is true or not.”

Thanda Group chief executive Pierre Delvaux said the villas would go on sale next year.

He said the group and King Goodwill had concluded an agreement over the use of the royal household brand to market the development.

The Thanda Private Game Reserve charges about R4 000 per person a night.

Buyers “will have exclusive invitations to the annual royal banquet dinner with the king . . . [and] will also have exclusive access from time to time to other VIP functions. [They] will also be invited by the king to join him on his annual royal hunting safari on his private game ranch located next to Thanda,” according to the prospectus.

The company developing the project is owned by Swedish billionaire Dan Olofsson, a close friend of King Goodwill. They formed Thanda Royal Zulu Football Club in 2006.

An Umhlanga apartment, owned by King Zwelithini, has been sold for R1.3-million. It is 850m from the five-star Beverly Hills Hotel, where the king racked up bills worth hundreds of thousands of rands to be paid by taxpayers.

The two-bedroom home was sold in September.

Two weeks ago, the Sunday Times reported that the KwaZulu-Natal government was negotiating the sale of a six-bedroom mansion in Assagay, 35km west of Durban, which it bought for R2.7-million in 2006 for the king. He never lived in the residence, citing security concerns. Instead, he and his entourage occupied suites

— which cost between R3 500 and R8 000 a night — at the Beverly Hills Hotel.