Africa’s last absolute monarch faces a tense 2003 after being accused of wasting millions of dollars on a private jet, kidnapping a schoolgirl, and wrecking the judicial system.
Despite this, framed photographs of Swaziland’s all-powerful King Mswati III, dressed in traditional clothes, hang in almost every shop in the capital city of Mbabane.
The Swazi people — more than a quarter of whom face starvation, and with a third of adults infected with HIV — adore their king, known as the ”Ngonyama” (lion).
”The present government has been making mistake after mistake. It not only has a negative international effect but also negative consequences to the Swazi nation,” said Obed Dlamini, leader of a banned opposition party, the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress.
”The Swazis are very strange. They love their royal house and will not denounce the king publicly.”
A diplomatic source in Mbabane said: ”There is a sense among traditionalists that any criticism of the government is a western conspiracy to unseat them.”
The 34-year-old Swazi king came under the spotlight this year when he chose an 18-year-old schoolgirl to become his 10th wife and her mother challenged his decision in court — a first in the country’s history.
The court case has now been postponed indefinitely but has sparked a judicial crisis, after the attorney general warned the three High Court judges presiding over the case — including the chief justice — to drop it or face dismissal.
And the tiny mountain kingdom, landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique, has seldom been out of the international headlines this year.
King Mswati also drew worldwide condemnation when he revealed he had bought a 4$5-million luxury jet while more than 250 000people, in a population of one million, are facing starvation as a result of drought, even though his hand-picked parliament had vetoed the purchase.
The kingdom is also facing a further judicial crisis after the mass resignation of all six judges on Swaziland’s Appeal Court.
The court issued an order allowing some 200 citizens to return to land from which they were evicted in 2000 after refusing to accept King Mswati’s elder brother, Prince Maguga, as the chief in the area. But Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini prompted the judges to resign after he accused them of being influenced by foreigners and saying the order would be ignored.
To add to the country’s woes, the United States warned in
December that it could lose trade benefits for failing to respect human rights and the rule of law.
A media statement issued by the US embassy said Swaziland’s continued eligibility under the African Growth and Opportunities Act, which gives preferential trade access to the United States, ”is not guaranteed and is subject to constant review”.
Lawyers have threatened a general strike to protest the judicial crisis, and trade unions called a general strike — it was poorly followed — on Thursday and Friday to object to the purchase of the jet and the lack of rule of law.
Trade unions, spearheading moves for greater democratisation, have been acting as the opposition since Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II, banned political parties in 1973, and clash sporadically with police during demonstrations.
That sort of internal pressure, plus pressure from donors, prompted the king to set up a panel to draw up a constitution, but opposition leaders have dismissed the draft it is working on as a ”sham”. – Sapa-AFP