Zulu royal family fight over succession in bitter dynastic power struggle

South Africa is preparing to bury its Zulu queen as a bitter battle for her succession threatens to split the powerful kingdom.

Queen Shiyiwe Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, 65, died last weekend after just a month in power.

She was the third of six wives of King Goodwill Zwelithini, 72, who died in March after nearly 50 years on the throne.

Since his death the royal family, which receives an annual taxpayer-funded budget of more than £3.5 million, has been blighted by infighting as different factions seek to claim the throne.

Rival royal camps have claimed the Queen was poisoned and that her husband's signature on his will naming her as regent was faked.

The Zulu are South Africa's largest ethnic group, representing around a fifth of the country's population of 60 million people. King Zwelithini officially had six wives, who all claimed separate palaces, and 28 children.

The traditional ruler has no political power but holds significant influence among the ethnic group, which also controls vast tracts of land.

Following King Zwelithini's death, daughters from his first wife launched a court challenge claiming the King's will was fraudulent, and that his signature on the document naming his regent had been forged.

Handwriting experts have reportedly been brought in to verify the will.

In a separate move, their mother, Queen Sibongile Dlamini Zulu asked a regional court to forbid the coronation of a regent and to recognise her civil marriage to the late king as his only legally binding union.

Following the death of Queen Mantfombi last week in a Johannesburg hospital, another royal, Prince Buthelezi, told South African media she may have been poisoned by rivals in the royal family.

"People think we're murderers," Princess Thembi, the late king's sister, told local media last week, denying the poisoning claim.

No official cause of death has been released. Local outlets have reported that she had been ill but have not released details of her medical condition.

On Wednesday, hundreds of mourners wearing face masks and traditional leopard skin accompanied the body of the late queen from a morgue in Johannesburg to its final burial site in Nongoma, in the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal where most Zulu live.

The ruler was buried on Thursday before dawn and an official funeral service will take place on Zulu land on Friday. South Adrican commentators have compared the succession wars to Game of Thrones.

"It is unthinkable that in the past such a massive fallout in the royal family could have been for public consumption on such a large scale," Zulu analyst Cyril Madlala said.

"WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook are among the weapons as the descendants of the founder of the Zulu nation, King Shaka, tear his legacy apart," he wrote in the Daily Maverick newspaper.

Queen Mantfombi, 65, was sister to King Mswati III, of neighbouring eSwatini, Africa's last ruling monarch.