The government said Friday it was buying a $250 million luxury jet for Swaziland’s king, even though massive food shortages threaten an estimated 230 000 people with starvation.
The announcement sparked a public outcry and Parliament called for the resignation of Swaziland’s prime minister, who arranged to buy the plane for King Mswati III at a price five times the impoverished nation’s national deficit.
”Why an aircraft for the king? The money spent … for the king’s jet should have been used for buying food for the starving Swazis,” said Pat Dlamini, a civil servant in the capital, Mbabane.
Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini said the jet was urgently needed to help the king attract foreign investment and international aid from abroad.
He dismissed accusations that he bought the jet without Parliament’s knowledge, saying a request for funding was made two years ago.
But lawmakers demanded that Dlamini resign, accusing him of using state funds to support the King’s pampered lifestyle.
”It is shocking no one ever mentioned the acquisition of the king’s jet before,” lawmaker Marwick Khumalo said. ”The action of prime minister is tantamount to white collar crime.”
Nntuthuko Dlamini, another lawmaker, agreed that the purchase of the plane was never authorised.
”If I had it my way, all the ministers, including the prime minister would have been taken to court for breaking the law,” he said.
Criticism of the king – Africa’s last absolute monarch – is normally unheard of in Swaziland’s royalist-dominated parliament.
The prime minister said the jet, made by Bombardier Global Express, is to be delivered to Swaziland after a second payment of $5-million.
Swaziland is a mountainous southern African nation of one million people. Besides the food crisis, it is also battling one of the highest HIV rates in the world, which UNAids says has reduced average life expectancy to 40 years. – Sapa-AP