Swaziland’s highest court finally resumed hearings on Thursday after a two-year feud between its judges and the monarchy was resolved.
The six judges of the Appeal Court took up their jobs again after resigning en masse in 2002 when the monarchy refused to abide by a court ruling that effectively scrapped an eviction order from King Mswati III.
The court was due to resume hearings on Wednesday, but the judges refused and threatened to leave the country after discovering the government has still not allowed 200 families to return to their ancestral land.
Mswati in 2001 ordered the eviction of the families in eastern Swaziland so that his brother, Prince Maguga Dlamini, could live there.
Judge President Ray Leon told a packed court on Thursday that the court had received an affidavit from Justice Minister Prince David Dlamini in which he undertook to implement the ruling and permit the families to move back to their land.
”It is on this basis that we found it fit to resume our duties,” Leon said.
Mswati (36) has been criticised for living in luxury while his subjects struggle with poverty in Swaziland, a mountainous kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique.
The country has the world’s highest per capita HIV prevalence rate, at 38,8%. — Sapa-AFP