LUNGA MASUKU, Mahlanya | Monday
SWAZILAND’S young absolute monarch bowed to pressure from the maidens of his kingdom on Sunday and delivered up an ox as a fine for taking a second fiance after demanding that all young women take a vow of chastity.
Three hundred young women marched seven kilometres from the village of Mahmanya to Ngabezweni Palace, the sleeping quarters of King Mswati III in the centre of the tiny mountain kingdom, which is sandwiched between South African and Mozambique.
There — ululating and chanting — they demanded redress, and the king capitulated.
Five soldiers escorted the 300 women and the ox back to Mahlanya. That trek took the soldiers five hours, because the ox was uncooperative, but the young women’s chief provided buses and trucks to bring them home.
At Mahlanya, they slit its throat, and the village held a barbecue, eating the entire ox, because the soldiers forbade them to take any meat home.
The saga began in mid-September, when King Mswati, who is just 33, and at that point had seven wives and one fiance, announced the reintroduction of the age-old “Umchwasho” chastity rite, under which young women and teenage girls must wear “don’t touch me” woollen tassels and forswear sex for five years.
That was a bid to counter Aids, which is estimated to have killed 50 000 of Swaziland’s one million people.
Shortly afterwards, the young women, annoyed that a 14-year-old daughter of the king was attending school in Britain, and had thus escaped the rite, discovered that the monarch had just taken a second fiance, 17-year-old Nontsetselelo Magongo, a Form IV schoolgirl he spotted at a traditional bare-breasted reed dance.
They rebelled, and on Sunday dropped their multi-coloured tassels at the palace as a form of protest, but said that as members of Swaziland’s virginity regiment — Imbali YeMaswati, “the Flowers of the Swazi Nation” — they were still committed to chastity.
Lungile Ndlovu, the leader of the regiment, said that the king had pleaded guilty as charged.
“When we got to Ngabezweni Palace, we started dancing and chanting traditional slogans until the king’s emissary came and asked what was wrong,” she said.
“We explained everything to him and he then showed us the king’s quarters and we proceeded to lay down our woollen tassels”, Ndlovu said.
“The emissary, Tulujane Sikhondze, told us that the king advised him he pleaded guilty, and he showed us an ox, which the king was paying as a fine.”
Young people from the region also descended on the household of the fiance, where they levied a 1 300 emalengi ($150) fine for allowing Nontsetselelo to become betrothed despite the new rules.
Nontsetselelos grandmother, who was alone at the homestead, was able to produce 300 emalengi.
She asked the maidens to come back for the rest after the teenager’s parents returned. – AFP