SWAZI PRINCESS TALKS ABOUT HER DAD

Swazi Media Commentary has been giving Swaziland’s King Mswati III a hard time lately, what with all these posts about how the Swazi media are scared of him and won’t report things that offend him and then there’s the public relations disaster over the 40/40 celebrations. On top of this there was the talk about how Mswati actually came to be king. And let’s draw a veil over the worry that women in Uganda were said to have about the king.

You see the truth is that the king is a misunderstood man. He isn’t a dictator and the money he spends on his lavish lifestyle is his own money and he can do with it what he likes. And people in Swaziland are not oppressed.

So there.

No, of course these are not my words. They are the words of Princess Sikhanyiso, the king’s eldest daughter.

In my report on censorship in Swazi newsrooms I make reference to the king being angry that the media once interviewed Sikhanyiso. He told them never to do it again.

I don’t know why he got so upset; she sticks up for Swaziland’s ‘absolute monarchy’ like a trooper.

Here’s Sikhanyiso from an interview published in the Daily Express, United Kingdom, and reproduced in the Nation magazine in Swaziland in January 2007.

On the king taking many wives

‘No one is forced to be his wife. Everybody has a choice to say ‘no’ if they don’t want to.’

On the king’s lifestyle

‘People at school would say we were taking all the money and wasting [it]. Quite frankly, I don’t see where I come in, and even where my father is concerned, half the money he gets comes from his own businesses. It is his money, so he does have the right to spend it.

‘His cars are meant to be bought by the government, but he’s started buying them himself because people have been complaining.

‘If people knew what kind of a person the king is, they’d want it to continue as an absolute monarchy, because he’s a kind and generous man. There is a plethora of charity groups he has started.

‘He has so much to deal with: he has 500 (five hundred) siblings to look after and then he has the political arena as well. They like to give out the idea the Swazi people are oppressed but they’re not.’

It seems to me that Sikhanyiso is a Godsend to the monarchy. The foreign media love her and she gives out the ‘official’ message that Swaziland is a heavenly place rather well.

Oh, and if the pictures that went along with the article are anything to go by she has good legs and big breasts, which she doesn’t mind showing.

See also
KING MSWATI III
CENSORSHIP AND THE SWAZI MEDIA
WITHOUT THE SWAZI KING ON TOUR