Revered skull of S. Africa king is Scottish woman 's .
JOHANNESBURG 1996-08-24
A limelight-loving South African chief was in disgrace on Saturday after a prized skull he brought home from Scotland was identified as belonging not to his sacred tribal ancestor , but to a middle-aged white woman .
A forensic scientist who examined the supposed skull of 19th century King Hintsa , a chief of President Nelson Mandela 's Xhosa tribe killed in battle by the British , said it was in fact the cranium of a European woman .
Chief Nicholas Gcaleka , dressed in animal skins and full tribal regalia , journeyed to a wintry Scotland in February on a hugely publicised quest to find Hintsa 's skull .
The witchdoctor said ancestors had appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to return the head , said to have been carried off as a colonial trophy by the officer who shot and allegedly beheaded Hintsa after a battle in 1835 .
But Gcaleka ran into trouble as soon as he returned to South Africa with a skull he found in a cottage in a lonely Highland forest near Inverness .
He said the spirit of a hurricane had guided him there .
Members of the Xhosa royal family , branding Gcaleka a charlatan , confiscated the head and sent it for tests to a forensic scientist , who examined the shape of the skull and the hole that he determined had not come , as supposed , from a bullet .
" It can be stated beyond reasonable doubt that this skull is not that of the late king , " the scientist said in a statement .