SATIRE ALIVE AND WELL IN SWAZILAND

Last Thursday King Mswati III of Swaziland, sub-Saharan Africa’s last autonomous monarch, ignored his own constitution and appointed Barnabas Dlamini, a man with a record of human rights abuses, as Prime Minister.

Political parties have been banned in Swaziland since 1973, the Swazi Parliament has no real powers, and the king makes all important decisions. The king appoints one in seven MPs and two thirds of the Senate House.

Today, (20 October 2008) King Mswati chairs a committee of the Southern African Development Community at which he intends to ‘urge’ Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to share power with opposition politicians against his will.

And they say satire is dead .....