It was about this time last year that I wrote a piece on the errant libido of the continent’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland. At the time, the world was in turmoil. Russia was on the verge of an all-out war with Ukraine, and Israel was pounding Hamas. The Islamic State had launched a savage attack in Syria and Iraq, and Boko Haram, the ISIS copycat, was leaving a bloody trail in the country’s North East.
It seemed the world had gone mad, but in the midst of it, King Mswati managed to invent his own world, a testosterone jungle where he reigns supreme. This time one year ago, the King fetched his 14th wife – a 19-year-old virgin – during the annual Umhlanga, or Reed Dance, at which thousands of half-naked young girls dance publicly at the king’s pleasure.
He has done it again. At yet another Reed Dance at the weekend in Mbabane, the Swazi capital, the 45-year-old monarch spotted Sindisawa Dlamini. Before the ceremony was over, he pointed the royal sceptre at the young high school graduate, virtually proclaiming her his 15th wife.
His country may have fallen on hard times, but Mswati’s palace has been thriving since he ascended the throne in 1986. Whatever the world may think, Swazis seem to love their king and the tourism that his progeny brings when the Reed Dance is held this time every year.
In recent times, however, the palace has been in the news mostly for the wrong reasons. Sometime ago, the heartbreaking story of a mother whose 18-year-old daughter was abducted on the orders of the palace came to light. Zena Mahlangu disappeared from school in 2002 and her mother later found out that she had been cloistered in the palace. She was being prepared to be the king’s
next chattel, no matter what she or her family thought.
next chattel, no matter what she or her family thought.
Her distraught mother did the unthinkable; that is, the unthinkable in Swaziland where the king shares the same motto with Louis XIV, l’etat c’est moi. Mahlangu’s mother sued the king, but by the time the dust settled years later, Zena had had two children for the king and had been officially proclaimed his wife. The chief justice who approved the trial and other justices involved were also swept aside by the angry flood of the king’s testosterone.
It was also from this libido jungle that three queens fled on allegations of years of physical and emotional abuse; a jungle that, surprisingly, still felt so outraged to catch Queen LaDube in bed with her lover, the justice minister, that it made a public show of the pair.
The new queen-in-waiting, Dlamini, entered the palace last week knowing full well that by this time next year, when another Reed Dance will hold, she’ll be a part of the king’s old collection. There’ll be a new queen, a new trophy.
Is the world misjudging an important Swazi tradition? Or are concerns about the king’s progeny and absolutism unjustified?
A report quoted the leader of Swaziland’s banned Communist Party, Kenneth Kunene, as describing the king’s 15th wife as “another burden to the Swazi masses, a further drain to the economy.”
Even by the king’s own standards, his country is failing. After years of being in denial or defiance, he pledged in March to stamp out AIDS from his country in the next seven years. Swaziland has 69 percent AIDS infection rate, the highest on the continent. Except living loose is a strategy to fight AIDS in his own book, I don’t understand why Mswati thinks he can be harem’s poster king and a champion in the fight against AIDS at the same time.
While most Swazis don’t know where the next meal will come from, the king uses nearly $40m of the country’s annual budget to sustain his court of 24 children, 14 wives and 13 tastefully furnished palaces.
In an article entitled, “Pomp and Poverty in Swaziland, Africa’s Last Absolute Monarch,” historian Carolyn Harris lamented the insensitivity and contradiction between the lifestyle of the monarch and the prevailing poverty in the country, a country where the king has an estimated $200m fortune while 70 percent of his 1.2m people live below the poverty line. “Although he reigns in the 21st century,” she wrote, “King Mswati faces the same mixed responses that absolute monarchs have always encountered from their subjects.”
It is convenient to say outsiders should leave Swaziland to Swazis. Yet today’s world is so interconnected that it doesn’t take long for the smell of your neighbour’s mess to reach your own front door. If Swazis could decide for themselves in a free and fair election the type of country they want, it would be a different matter. As things stand now, even the outcome of today’s parliamentary election will not make a difference.
The only thing that matters is the size of one man’s appetite. African leaders owe themselves a favour to call this king to order.
Ref: http://leadership.ng/columns/460161/tribute-to-the-kings-15th-wife
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