Eswatini’s King Mswati III
Thousands of flag-waving Eswatini citizens filled the national stadium on Friday to celebrate a reign that has lasted four decades — but beyond the fanfare, deep tensions persist between the spectacle of royal privilege and the grinding poverty facing a significant portion of the kingdom’s population.
Marching bands blew horns, women ululated and men cheered to mark King Mswati III’s 40 years on the throne, while a choir dressed in yellow, blue and red to form the image of the national flag sang the king’s praises and held up a sign wishing him a happy 58th birthday.
Riding through the crowd in an open-top car, dressed in a British military-style scarlet tunic, Mswati struck a unifying tone in his address to the nation. “We have been through thick and thin as a nation,” he told the crowd. “It is important we remain united.”
For many in attendance, the celebration was a moment of genuine gratitude. Shabusiswa Sibambo, 19, pointed to tangible improvements in daily life — free schooling introduced in 2022 and mobile clinics rolled out the following year — as evidence of the king’s development agenda. “We are proud of our culture,” she told Reuters. Nearby, her aunt Busiwe Maziya, 70, a subsistence maize farmer who remembered Mswati’s ascent to the throne in 1986, said her life had improved considerably, citing government support with agricultural tools and fertiliser. “Even the rainfall has been better,” Maziya said.
Yet the jubilation masks a stark and well-documented divide. Sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch and his dozen wives are widely criticised for a lavish lifestyle whose upkeep costs tens of millions of dollars — with the government this month approving an additional $3 million allocation for royal expenses. Meanwhile, roughly a third of the mountainous, landlocked nation’s 1.5 million people live below the World Bank’s poverty line of $2.15 a day.
Wandile Dludlu, leader of the country’s biggest opposition party, made no attempt to conceal his contempt for the celebrations. The festivities amounted to “yet another public waste of scarce resources,” he told Reuters, rattling off a list of what he described as unresolved crises including poverty, inequality and one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates.
That discontent has previously spilled onto the streets. In 2021, widespread protests over the wealth gap were violently suppressed by security forces, drawing sharp condemnation from international human rights organisations. The kingdom attracted further unwelcome international attention more recently, after it jailed deportees sent from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown — an episode that drew scrutiny from both rights groups and foreign governments.
Mswati, who assumed the throne at just 18 following the death of his father King Sobhuza II’s successor, has ruled through constitutional changes that have kept political parties banned and concentrated power firmly within the monarchy — a system his supporters defend as rooted in Swati tradition, but which critics argue leaves citizens with no meaningful political recourse.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah