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Indlovukazi (sometimes spelled Indlovukati) is a title given to the "King's", i.e. the Ngwenyama or Lion of Swaziland's mother, or to his senior queen if his mother has died. It roughly corresponds to the title Queen Mother. It literally means The She-Elephant. The Ndlovukati formally is the joint head of state with her son; in official ideals, while her son is seen as the administrative head of state, the Ndlovukati herself is seen as the spiritual and national head of state. She controls important ritual substances (sometimes called "medicines") and knowledge necessary to the inauguration of the rule of an Ngwenyama and to the renewal of national and kingly strength each year in the Ncwala national-royal rituals, which link royal and national well-being through invocation of the powers of royal ancestors.
Historically there have been a number of Indlovukazis with great substantial power as well as influence, particularly though not exclusively in periods of regency. The power of Indlovukazi was explicitly understood as a counterweight to that of Ngwenyamas (Kings) and also to potentially rival princes of royal blood. Like royal governors who were not from the royal Dlamini lineage, the Indlovukazi could not succeed to the "kingship," thus offering an alternative source of power to rein in overweaning tiNgwenyama that could not challenge directly to be Ingwenyama.
During the long reign of the Ngwenyama Sobhuza II, (1899-1982), his grandmother the Ndlovukati Labotisibeni Mdluli (a.k.a. Gwamile) was the last great Ndlovukati, being the primary Swazi political power from Sobhuza's succession as an infant in 1899 until his accession to full power in 1922. However, over the following 60 years the practical power and influence of the office of indlovukati became greatly overshadowed, in part because the British chose to recognize the powers of the king (whom they called the "Paramount Chief") over those of the queen-mother, in part because of the force of Sobhuza's personality in contrast to the tiNdlovukati who succeeded his own mother after she died in 1938, and in part because of conservative aristocratic Swazi male reactions to colonialism that reified a new and more rigid form of patriarchy which was mischaracterized as "traditional." The office of ndlovukati suffered a further blow after the death of Sobhuza II, when a holder of the office was implicated in the political machinations of Prince Mfanasibili aimed at usurping the kingship. Thus the political-cultural ideals and historical meanings of the office expressed above do not really characterize the Ndlovukati today (2006), whose position has become much weaker than that of the Ngwenyama.
At any time where there is both a "king" (it is the English translations that ought to be put in scare quotes, not the SiSwati terms) and an Ndlovukati, which is most of the time, there are two Royal headquarters. Even during a regency when the "king" is a minor, there is a proto-form of his headquarters prepared. The "king's" is where he carries out his administrative duties; the Ndlovukati's, which is called umphakatsi, (meaning "the inside," and a term also applied to the royal insiders and close allies as a group) is the national capital and spiritual and ceremonial home of the nation.
"Indovuzaki"