My post earlier this month (August 2008) about how Swaziland's King Mswati III had hired a public relations (PR) firm in London to improve his image in the international community prompted a reader to point out this recent article in a US magazine.
It seems that King Mswati III has also been paying a PR lobbyist E140,000 (20,000 US dollars) a month in the United States to work for him. The PR firm told the magazine the king was ‘real green behind the ears’. The PR firm told the king to stop holding the annual Reed Dance because important people in the United States didn’t like the idea of 40,000 maidens dancing with bare breasts because there was a ‘sexual undertone’ to it.
Here are the opening paragraphs to the article by James Kirchick. It is called Despots and the lobbyists who love them and it appeared in the New Republic on 13 August 2008. To read the full article click here.
Joe Szlavik remembers the moment when he began to suspect that his work on behalf of the Kingdom of Swaziland was an enormous waste of time. It was 2006, and Szlavik--a lobbyist who had represented foreign governments ranging from Burundi to Gabon to Uganda, as well as the late Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan--was helping Swaziland, a tiny, landlocked monarchy sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique, navigate the tricky waters of Washington politics. Swaziland's King Mswati III (“a great guy, one-on-one,” says Szlavik, but “real green behind the ears”) and his foreign minister (“crusty, old guard, and incompetent”) were in town, and the lobbyist met them at the stately Willard InterContinental Hotel. Szlavik, whose firm was pulling in $20,000 per month from its Swaziland account, had some difficult news to deliver about a certain Swazi custom. “You have this reed dance, with these virgins,” he explained to me recently. Szlavik's message to his client was simple. “Listen to me,” he implored the king. “You got to stop this.”
The reed dance, or umhlanga in the Swati language, is probably Swaziland's best-known tradition. Every August or September, thousands of girls congregate at Ludzidzini, the King’s royal residence, for an eight-day festival of music, dancing, and singing, officially in honor of the king's mother. On the seventh day, the young women--all topless--don skirts made of freshly cut reeds and perform personally for the king, who may decide to choose one of them as a bride.
The reed dance had recently been a source of domestic political embarrassment for Mswati. In 2001, troubled by his country’s high HIV rate (at least one-third of the population is believed to be infected), Mswati had issued a decree that no girl below the age of 18 would be allowed to have sex for five years. Then, in 2004, at the annual reed dance, Mswati chose a twelfth wife. The problem: She was 16 (and a former Miss Teen Swaziland finalist to boot), meaning that the king was now technically in violation of his own law.
Soon enough, the sex ban was lifted. The reed dance, however, continued--and, back in Washington, it was causing Szlavik no end of problems. Earlier, he had brought the king and Swazi ambassador to meet with Chris Smith, a socially conservative Republican representative from New Jersey and then chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. Smith “understood there was a traditional part to the dance but in light of the gravity of the HIV situation [thought] maybe they could put tradition aside,” Szlavik recalls.
Such arguments were lost on King Mswati. “Look Joe, I understand the whole thing with the West, but we look at breasts like you look at feet,” the monarch told him. It wasn't an unreasonable point. In some rural African cultures, women refraining from wearing tops is about as common as U.S. postal workers wearing shorts in the summer. But try explaining that to a conservative Republican congressman.
“I like breasts personally,” Szlavik, a fast-talking cheerful man of about 40, told the king. “But, you know, there's a sexual undertone to it clearly.”
See also
SWAZILAND KING AND THE PR FIRM
3 comments:
Richard, you are doing a super job of showing Swazi journalist what they are supposed to be doing. You are a pro and we appreciate your reporting skills.
A+ without a question!
I understand that for peoples in the West, seeing a man have women dance around in a state that is considered a taboo, can make one very uncomfortable.
But dont you think it is time to understand that we can not continue to press upon others, what we deem as moral. Liking AIDs and a cultural ritual is unfair.
If this had been a European ritual, it would have been praised and celebrated.
i oppose the idea that the ritual should be abolished because westerners get excited seing women's breasts:the west clearly has issues with the female body!
i agree with the t.jonna, that linking this ritual celebration with the spread of hiv/aids is ludicrous. who really knows what is the cause of this virus that seems to be 'only' striking the 'developing'/ex european colony countries...
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