Background
Zonke Khumalo was born on April 26, 1927, at Zombode in the Manzini District.
Zonke Khumalo was born on April 26, 1927, at Zombode in the Manzini District.
Educated first at Zombode, then at Matsapa Swazi National School, and finally at the Salesian High School at Manzini. He moved to South Africa where he qualified as a teacher at Indaleni Training College, Natal.
In January 1955 he returned to Swaziland to teach at Herefords Central School in the Pigg’s Peak area. He abandoned teaching in December 1956 to go into business with his brother. Eight years later he started on the road to political power by winning a seat as Imbokodvo candidate in the Manzini District in the June 1964 elections. He spent June and July 1965 in the United States studying public administration as guest of the Americans. In August 1965 he got ministerial responsibility with the portfolio of Health in an enlarged Executive Council.
He scored another election victory in 1967 in the Usutu constituency and was appointed Assistant Minister in the Prime Minister’s office. His role was to ease the prime ministerial burdens of Prince Makhosini Dlamini which often meant travelling abroad on his behalf. In November and December 1967 he went to West Germany and Britain. In April and May 1968 he made an inspection tour of Swaziland’s diplomatic missions.
In the first four years of independence he proved a reliable deputy to the Prime Minister and was rewarded after the elections in May 1972 with the post of Deputy Prime Minister.
Not eager to be an innovator, he relies upon others for ideas then translates them into practical measures. Stocky, with a well-trimmed moustache and a carefully kept small beard, Khumalo presents himself as a middle-of-the-road man although many regard him as pro-South African. His dependa-bility was largely responsible for his nomination to succeed the first Deputy Prime Minister, Mfundza Sukata.
Son-in-law of the King with a talent for finding a compromise solution in a clash of opinion inside the cabinet, and himself something of a compromise candidate chosen to keep the other contenders for political succession from creating a crisis. A good listener, he has shown a shrewd sense of timing in being the man at hand at the right moment. This explains his extraordinary leap from being a junior minister to no. 2 in the Cabinet.