Let them eat cake, Princess Sikhanyiso

“Most people have the Internet on their phones – I think almost everyone in Swaziland is on Facebook.”

Princess Sikhanyiso, the eldest daughter of Swaziland’s absolute monarch, King Mswati III, is speaking about the telecommunications industry in Swaziland at her graduation at Sydney University, where she also told the Australian tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, that she wishes to put her newly attained Master’s Degree in Digital Communication to good use when she returns to Swaziland next week.

She might as well have said “let them eat cake,” though – the infamous remark erroneously attributed to France’s Queen Marie Antoinette when she was supposedly told that her people had no bread during a famine.

Enevældig konge over forarmet folk køber privat jetfly

Kong Mswati III af det lille enevældige kongedømme Swaziland er kendt for sit luksusforbrug og unødvendige prestigeprojekter.

Blandt andet startede han i 2003 opførelsen af landets anden internationale lufthavn, Sikhuphe-lufthavnen, der indtil nu har kostet op imod en milliard kroner at bygge. Og i 2009 sendte han sine tretten koner på luksusshopping til Europa og Mellemøsten, hvilket anslås at have kostet statskassen 30 millioner kroner.

Nu har han gjort det igen. Han har købt sig et McDonnell Douglas DC-9 luksus-jetfly til sin 44-års fødselsdag

Swazi democratic movement “disappointed” at South Africa loan

“We’re disappointed,” says Sikelela Dlamini from the Swaziland United Democratic Front. He is commenting on the $355 million loan that South Africa has promised Swaziland’s absolute monarchy to stave off an economic and political meltdown in Swaziland.

Swaziland had been refused loans from the IMF and the African Development Bank earlier this year and is now virtually bankrupt due to financial mismanagement. Civil servant salaries have stopped or are to be slashed, delivery of HIV-medicine to the hundreds of thousands of Swazi’s infected with HIV has stopped, the Royal Swazi National Airways has been grounded, and yesterday, the University of Swaziland was closed down and students sent home.

School principals in Swaziland threaten school closures as protest against government

School principals in Swaziland, a small absolute monarchy in Southern Africa with one million inhabitants, threaten to close down the country’s schools indefinitely on Monday. The purpose of these closures is to protest the recent and unannounced cut-backs on Swaziland’s schools.

The principals are particularly angry at the Swazi government’s non-payment of the fees for Swaziland’s over 100.000 Aids-orphans and vulnerable children who subsequently cannot afford to attend school, and at the proposed salary cuts for school employees. Swaziland’s many thousand Aids-orphans are the result of a HIV-epidemic that has seen over 30% of its adult population infected.

Will Zuma’s South Africa demand democratisation in Swaziland?

“I believe that king Mswati III is under immense pressure even from his closest buddy, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma,” says Sikelela Dlamini from the Swaziland United Democratic Front, an umbrella organisation of the democratic movement in Swaziland.

The recent spate of pro-democracy demonstrations against the regime in Swaziland, which so far culminated in the mass demonstrations in March and April of this year, shows the increasing willingness of Swazis to face intimidation and police brutality to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the regime.

Danish NGO: Send Swaziland’s king and his many wives home from today’s Royal wedding

“It is a disgrace that the British Monarchy has invited Swaziland’s King Mswati to attend today’s Royal wedding,” says Information Officer of Danish solidarity organization Africa Contact, Morten Nielsen. “They should send Swaziland’s king and his many wives home.”

Today’s Royal wedding is an event that will be broadcast to billions of viewers around the world, and inviting brutal despots such as Swaziland’s absolute monarch, King Mswati II, and his 13 wives, will be seen as a recognition of their international legitimacy by the Swazi regime.

What key roles for Swazi women?

On September 28, King Mswati III praised women around the world for “continuing to play key roles in contributing to the socio-economic and political development of our nations”. Whereas this is certainly true, and even though Swaziland have ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2004 and the country’s new constitution promises equal treatment for men and women, the latter face an uphill struggle for equality in Mswati III’s Swaziland.

Men and women still do not have equal status in Swaziland, as Swazi women are legally subordinate to men in e.g. both civil and traditional marriages. And even though the new constitution might have theoretically done away with laws that meant that Swazi women could not get a bank loan or own property without the written consent of their husbands, and thereby promoting them from the status of minors, these laws have not yet been revoked. In practice the Swazi Supreme Court has even reversed a High Court ruling that allowed women to register property in their own name, banks still refuse to give bank loans to women without their husband’s written consent, and customary law forbids women to register property in their own names.

Swaziland: …and all the king’s men

Swaziland is an absolute monarchy run by King Mswati III, who has the authority to appoint the Prime Minister, members of parliament, and the judiciary, and according to the constitution he also has the final say in executive, legislative, and judicial matters. Regardless of the increasing brutality of the Swazi regime, the King is also to a large degree still popular throughout Swazi society, at least symbolically if not in person, and no political party openly declares that it wishes Swaziland to become a republic.

Many see the King as a figure and symbol of cultural significance, binding together the Swazi nation. Cultural events such as the Reed Dance, however, are also good examples of how the monarchy and the King use culture to retain absolute power.

Swazi king’s wives on shopping spree

According to still unconfirmed reports from the Swaziland Democracy Campaign,  some or all of the 13 wives of king Mswati of Swaziland have gone on yet another multi-million dollar shopping spree, this time to Brussels and London. An additional 80 other people have apparently accompanied them to attend to the queens, according to Swazi Media Commentary. Commenting on this, Swaziland United Democratic Front and Swaziland Federation of Labour General Secretary Vincent Ncongwane insisted that he wanted to have “this wasteful visit exposed as we cannot be seen to be silent at this time when the common man, woman and indeed child on the streets go to bed (a good number of them) without food for a day or two and have to make do with handouts”.