As the HIV/Aids scourge sweeps through tiny, impoverished Swaziland, its absolute monarch, King Mswati III, is expected to take his 10th wife on Saturday at the close of the country’s traditional reed dance festivities.
The festivities started in earnest on August 23, when thousands of young girls were released to go out and cut the reed, which will be used to build the fence of the Queen Mother’s homestead.
Mswati is widely expected to pick a wife from among these girls.
Mswati married his ninth wife early this year, and, as the tradition demands, he will be required to take another wife as he continues to search for the suitable mother of his heir.
Palace sources intimated that his aides had already identified the next wife, and the rest of the process is going to be a formality.
However, women’s groups have expressed dismay at the practice, saying that it was tantamount to abuse. Although they cannot openly oppose the marriage practice – it could be interpreted as dissent against the monarch – two of lawyers activists agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
”How can one man satisfy nine women?” one asked.
They said that with HIV/Aids ravaging the country, there was no guarantee that even the King would be spared.
”He has nine wives, all of whom are at their peak of their sexual activities, and it will be very difficult to keep them away for ever. Unlike the wives his father had, who were basically the traditional housewives, these are modern women who have needs, and keeping them in a palace without satisfying these needs will lead to temptations,” one said.
While respecting their country’s traditional culture, the activists said that they were totally against the royal marriage practices, which reduce women to mere objects of beauty.
”You can see by the way he parades them around when he goes for his unending foreign visits. Everything resembles a beauty pageant, which is an insult to Swazi women,” one said.
But one royalist argued that the practice was in line with Swazi tradition and ”cannot be changed overnight”.
”The King has a right to marry as many wives as he wants, because Swaziland belongs to him. I know that this time ’round after the Umhlanga (Reed Dance) ceremony, he will have another wife,” he said.
Swaziland is thought to have the second highest HIV/Aids rate in the world, and there is a fear that with a combination of the scourge of the disease and the food shortage currently affecting the country, the monarch will have to change his priorities. – Sapa-DPA