waziland – a bewitching, verdant and mountainous little kingdom in southern Africa – has lately been more troubled than usual.
Last week, trade unions and activists banded together to challenge the absolute monarchy here.
King Mswati III has responded to their demands for greater political freedom, less corruption and more transparency in government with despotic crackdowns on their leaders.
The landlocked country of 1.4 million citizens, which is bordered on three sides by South Africa and on the east by Mozambique, gained independence from Great Britain in 1968.
King Mswati III was born four months before independence and inherited the mantle of authority from his father in 1986, eighteen years later.
Today, Swaziland is Africa's last absolute monarchy. Royal partisans dispute this characterisation; they point out that the King shares power with his mother, according to custom.
The past twenty-four years have seen the King develop a reputation for profligacy, ostentation, corruption, and petty self-indulgence in a country where thirty per cent of the people are unemployed, and seventy per cent subsisting on less than one dollar a day.
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