Apart from six palaces — one for each wife — Swazi King Mswati III earlier this year bought a hotel, it has been discovered
SWAZI King Mswati III has bought an R8-million hotel in Mbabane at a time when the homes of many of his subjects are being repossessed by Swaziland’s banks.
Both the price and the provenance of the hotel have attracted controversy. Businessmen believe the king has seriously overpaid; the Mbabane city council has assessed the property at R3-million.
And the fact that the king bought the Castle Hotel in his personal capacity was kept secret for weeks, until it surfaced coincidentally in a court case earlier this month.
The manager of the hotel had accused millionaire property developer Kal Grant — at that time believed to own the hotel — of harassing her, and charged him with trespassing. It was revealed during the case that followed that Grant had sold the hotel to the king.
The king owns a great deal of property in his kingdom, including a palace for each of his six wives, and there have been rumours for years of villas in Brunei, yachts in Australia and property in the United States.
The latest deal comes in the wake of countrywide turmoil: months of pro-democracy demonstrations and strikes, including a lengthy teachers’ strike settled only fortnight ago. Last week a contingent of southern African leaders — President Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, Botswana’s President Ketumile Msire and Mozambican President Joachim Chissano — met the Swazi acting prime minister Sishayi Nxumalo at an “emergency consultative meeting” in Maputo. Afterwards, Mandela said he believed the king would be moving towards democracy.
And indeed, at the gathering of the nation on Friday last week, although the 23-year ban on political parties was not lifted, a constitutional committee, charged with constitutional review, was appointed.
And a new prime minister was named: former minister of finance Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini and the executive director of the International Monetary Fund for southern Africa. The last prime minister, Prince Mbilini, was retired summarily in May.
Meanwhile, the land deals continue — and so do suspicions that the king is too close to wealthy and influential businessmen. The troublesome Malagwane Hill Road, intended to be cut through Grant’s property, has been diverted around the hill to avoid it, at a cost of several million rands. Nor is Grant the only beneficiary: the road has also been diverted around the property of the powerful Prince Masitsela, the king’s brother.