Deport Nigerian ‘king’ and all who crowned him, traditional leaders demand

Traditional leaders, civil society and political parties have united in calling for the immediate deportation of a Nigerian national coronated as an Igbo king in the Eastern Cape.

They have also called for the deportation of everyone who participated in the ceremony as a peaceful march in KuGompo City descended into violence on Monday.

Remove them from our borders

The Amathole house of traditional and Khoisan leaders has issued an unequivocal demand: Solomon Ogbonna Eziko, the Nigerian national coronated as Igwe Ndigbo in KuGompo City earlier this month, must be deported, along with every individual who took part in the ceremony.

Chief Xhanti Sigcawu, speaking to the SABC during Monday’s march, left no room for ambiguity.

“Our sovereignty is through the statutes and dictates of the constitution of South Africa and the laws governing this country,” he said. “No one can come from wherever that person comes from and come here and undermine the authority of this country, especially this kingdom.”

Sigcawu called on the government to immediately remove all those who participated in what he described as an illegal coronation.

“Whoever participated in this illegal coronation of the so-called king is removed from the borders of this country with immediate effect, whether that person came legally or not.”

He broadened the demands further, urging law enforcement to conduct an immediate audit of all foreign-owned spaza shops and businesses in the region, both urban and rural, to verify documentation.

“We are appealing to the law enforcement authorities to immediately deal with those before people take the law into their own hands,” he said.

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He was explicit about the consequences of government inaction.

“We will really take up arms if this is not immediately attended to,” Sigcawu said, characterising the coronation as a calculated provocation.

“This event of the past week really shows that these foreign nationals, especially the Igbo people from Nigeria, undermine the authority of our kingship. And they want to see this country in turmoil.”

The political demand for deportation

The call for deportation was echoed at the highest levels of parliamentary politics.

In a formal letter to the Minister of Home Affairs dated 30 March 2026, African Transformation Movement parliamentary leader Vuyo Zungula demanded the government initiate an urgent investigation into the immigration status of all individuals involved in the coronation and move swiftly to “arrest, prosecute and deport all individuals involved in the unlawful coronation”.

He further called for strengthened interdepartmental coordination to prevent similar incidents from recurring.

Zungula cited the Immigration Act 13 of 2002, arguing that participants who lack proper documentation or have exceeded their visa conditions may be in violation of Section 49, which deals with offences relating to illegal foreigners.

“The African Transformation Movement maintains that this matter strikes at the very heart of South Africa’s sovereignty, constitutional supremacy, and the rule of law,” he wrote, adding that “what has transpired cannot be dismissed as a mere cultural exercise but must be confronted as a direct challenge to the authority of the state”.

A peaceful march turns violent

The demands were carried through the streets of KuGompo City on Monday morning, as civil society groups, political parties, and traditional leaders gathered under the March and March organisation to deliver a memorandum to Buffalo City mayor Princess Faku.

The march had been lawfully applied for and initially proceeded without incident.

However, as traditional leaders addressed the crowd from the back of an open vehicle, violence broke out.

A group began hurling stones at buildings, vehicles, and property before setting several vehicles alight.

Police responded with rubber bullets and stun grenades.

By the time order was partially restored, at least 12 vehicles had been damaged and two individuals injured.

Businesses along the route shuttered their shops ahead of the crowd’s arrival, with a local mechanic telling reporters that protesters had thrown stones and bricks at properties in the area.

Watch: Vehicles set alight in KuGompo City as peaceful protest turns violent

[WATCH] Protesters have torched vehicles and buildings allegedly belonging to foreign nationals in protest against the installation of a Nigerian king in the Eastern Cape. @Sipha_KemaSA reports pic.twitter.com/g5lH1nNKu3

– Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) March 30, 2026

‘This is our new age struggle’

Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, one of the lead organisers of March and March, said the protest was not a spontaneous reaction but part of a sustained national campaign.

A similar march had already been held in KwaZulu-Natal and when Eastern Cape residents reached out for support, mobilisation was immediate.

For Ngobese-Zuma, the coronation was the most visible expression of a far deeper problem, the systematic failure of government to enforce its own laws against foreign nationals.

She pointed to undocumented spaza shop operators and wage undercutting.

“Foreign nationals are so good at manipulating the system that they’ll buy off the police, they’ll buy off the officials, they’ll buy off even South Africans in their own country,” she said.

She dismissed the xenophobia label that has frequently been applied to such protests, arguing that critics had long silenced legitimate grievances under that banner.

“We don’t care what they call us really, xenophobic, Afrophobic, they can cry to the rest of the world, nobody cares,” she said.

“Right now it’s our turn to tell our stories. We are a country that’s being invaded by foreigners.”

Political parties back the march

ActionSA Eastern Cape leader Atholl Trollip attended the march before it turned violent, expressing strong support for its core message.

He took particular exception to statements allegedly made at the coronation about establishing an Igbo homeland in the Eastern Cape.

He described the situation as intolerable given the province’s painful history with the former Ciskei and Transkei homelands.

“We are not going to tolerate the establishment of another homeland,” Trollip said. “This province is not up for the taking.”

He reiterated ActionSA’s position that the constitution’s guarantee that South Africa belongs to all who live in it applies only to citizens and legally documented immigrants.

“ActionSA says no to illegal immigration and no to the provocation of coronating an Igbo Nigerian ‘king’ anywhere in SA and certainly not in the Eastern Cape,” he said.

After violence broke out, Trollip expressed regret, saying a marcher had been stabbed.

“This has undermined the whole objective of the march,” he added.

The Patriotic Alliance also weighed in, arguing that the coronation undermines the customary laws upheld by the province’s existing traditional leadership.

“This is a declaration of war. We shall not have someone who is going to claim to be a king of people where there is a recognisable king already in place,” said a masked councillor who called himself Andile.

What the law says

The legal questions surrounding the coronation remain unresolved.

South African law does recognise chiefs and traditional leaders, but no precedent exists for the recognition of a traditional leader from outside the country.

Officials have indicated that falsely claiming kingship could attract criminal liability, though the precise legal standing of the ceremony continues to be debated.

The department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) last week said that “anyone who and any community which claims to be a king or kingship, respectively, without having the government gazettes and certificate of recognition published by the president are thus not legitimate”.

It added that according to Section 7(9) of the Act, anyone who is not a legally recognised traditional leader but presents themselves as one is committing a criminal offence.

Cogta confirmed that such a person “is guilty of an offence and is liable upon conviction to a fine or imprisonment not exceeding three years”.

The Nigerian embassy reportedly characterised the ceremony as a routine customary practice carried out by the Igbo diaspora across the world. Trollip flatly rejected this.

“We have taken great exception to the disrespect and the provocation of this coronation,” he said. “We want the Nigerian government to come out strongly against it.”

As the dust settled on Oxford Street and fire and rescue services moved in to attend to the burning vehicles, KuGompo City counted the cost of a day that had started as a march and ended as a flashpoint that may likely to reverberate far beyond the Eastern Cape.

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