WITHOUT THE [SWAZI] KING ON TOUR

The quite possibly seditious documentary Without the King is now freely circulating in Swaziland.

‘Pirated’ copies of the DVD have been winging their way around the kingdom and I have received reports of it being watched in every major urban area in Swaziland.

According to the documentary’s own publicity, Without The King ‘captures the birth of a nation’s revolution’. Personally, I suspect the ‘revolution’ is some way off yet, but the DVD does show scenes where ordinary people in Swaziland talk about their dissatisfaction with the ruling elite – including King Mswati III.

Swazi media are not allowed to voice such sentiments – and it is not really safe for ordinary people to say them out loud in most places in Swaziland.

I hear there have been some discussions in the main cities of Mbabane and Manzini about showing the documentary at a public venue. People are quite understandably scared to do this for fear of what might happen either at the showing itself (police in Swaziland are brutal when it comes to dealing with dissent) or what might happen after the event to the person or organisation that allowed the showing to take place.

All this is in great contrast to North America where Without the King is showing in public cinemas across the continent. It is also receiving interesting reviews in newspapers and on the Internet.

I picked up this review on the Internet from someone called Kam Williams at News Blaze.

I think Williams got a little carried away, especially with regards to the statistics (do you know what 45 BILLION US Dollars looks like Kam?) and the bit about the ‘airhead’ Princess Sikhanyiso is a bit strong, but (unlike in Swaziland) everyone is entitled to their opinion.

‘King Mswati III is a benevolent despot ruling the tiny African nation of Swaziland with a velvet-gloved iron fist. This last absolute monarch on the continent governs just about the only sub-Saharan country somehow untouched by civil war or ethnic cleansing over the last 30 years. In contrast to such war-torn lands as Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Sudan, Swaziland has enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence.

‘This, despite the fact that its citizens have a 42% AIDS rate and the world's lowest life expectancy at 31. Plus, most of the population has to survive on about 63 cents a day, and are thus very dependent on donations from international charities just to survive.

‘Meanwhile, the royal family lives in the lap of luxury, starting with the king. He has 14 wives, and picks another new one to add to his harem from the 75,000 topless young virgins participating in the annual Reed Dance, a weeklong celebration of chastity.

‘He also owns 7 palaces, a fleet of luxury cars, the media and sugar industries, and most of the developed real estate. Plus, he has $45 billion stashed away in a Swiss bank for safekeeping. Political parties are banned in Swaziland, so the miserable plight of the people isn’t about to change any time soon in the absence of a revolution.

‘Besides Mswati, the film focuses on the decadent behavior of his spoiled-rotten eldest child, an airhead attending college in California. Well aware of the exploitation of her father’s subjects, this future queen sarcastically appraises the situation shortly before the curtain comes down, vaguely promising to make some changes while rolling her eyes.

‘We’re supposed to buy the idea that the Swazis will be saved by Africa’s answer to Paris Hilton? Yeah, right. Proof-positive that despotism and decadence comes in all colors.’

I notice that Williams didn’t even think it worth mentioning the name of the King’s daughter (it’s Princess Sikhanyiso). The princess gets a more sympathetic mention by another reviewer, Cynthia Fuchs, writing on the popmatters website.

‘Princess Sikhanyiso, also known as Pashu, is the eldest of her father King Mswati III’s 22 children. A dutiful daughter and self-described “rhyme slayer,” the amateur rapper leads a film crew through the King’s palace in Mbabane, capital of Swaziland, pointing out the gigantic swordfish that adorns “one of the rooms for most important visitors.” She smiles politely, anticipating her upcoming 18th birthday and comparing the tour to MTV Cribs. [A television programme in which ‘famous’ people show off their homes.]

‘Pashu straddles a particular and complicated divide in Without the King… Introduced defending her father’s reign (“I think being a king is the hardest thing ever; you have to take the most criticism in the country”), she is also on her way to Hollywood, starting her freshman year at Biola University, a Christian school.

‘As Pashu’s mother Queen LaMbikiza remembers being married at 16, Mswati’s first wife, the daughter imagines that her education in a foreign land will prepare her for being royal in the future. “We are the ones that have to change the country,” she says of her generation,” and toward that end, she seeks “knowledge.”

‘Her father, in turn, expresses his pleasure in a way that indicates his conditioned detachment and performance for the camera (Pashu refers to him repeatedly as “the King”): “I have a kid that is going to university,” he smiles, “Of course I am very proud, the kid has been very good.”

‘As Pashu enjoys the “freedom” of campus life without security details and with an ATM card (“I’ve never used one,” she says, pressing buttons on the machine as the camera focuses on the sign above: Need Cash?).

‘Her story in the abstract is soon reframed by experience. Stepping into the street outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, she’s impressed by the traffic, the lights, the architecture: “I wish that Africa was like this as well,” she says, her sentences fracturing. “It just shows how much we still need to… It seems impossible… It wouldn’t even be good to reach this level...” She sighs and finishes with an assessment that is diplomatic and self-preserving: “You guys are doing good for yourselves.”’

But, of the recent crop of reviews, Bruce Bennett, writing in the New York Sun, is the most overtly political.

‘The king’s insistence on upholding venerable tribal customs at the expense of modernization is revealed to be a social perversion allowing tyranny, ignorance, and cruelty. “The mind fractures at the thought of it,” one U.N. health advocate says. Footage of Swazi citizens preparing meals of offal scavenged from landfills and slaking their thirst from fetid, muddy ponds takes its toll in Without the King, and as the film examines the grotesque disparity in wealth between ruler and ruled, the heart starts to crack, too.

‘But U.N. observers and film viewers, like the members of the royal family themselves, can afford the luxury of sentiment. King Mswati’s subjects, however, cannot, and among the bracing nonfiction disclosures that Without the King makes is precisely where terrorists and freedom fighters come from and just how narrow the semantic line is between the two. “I don't want to die for the struggle,” says one emaciated would-be assassin. “I want to kill for the struggle.” Nearing the end of the approximately three decades that he'll remain alive, the man has literally nothing to lose either way.’
See also
SWAZILAND ‘REVOLUTION’ DOCO ON DVD