A teenager has escaped from Swaziland to avoid becoming King Mswati III’s 14th wife.
The 19-year-old from the Swazi capital Mbabane was spotted by the king at the Reed Dance in 2006 when she was 17 years old.
At the Reed Dance tens of thousands of bare-breasted girls dance before the king. It is often rumoured (and often denied) that one of the main purposes of the Reed Dance is to give the king a chance to choose another wife.
King Mswati who turned 40 this year has a daughter older than his new intended wife.
According to South Africa’s Sowetan newspaper today (10 October 2008) Tandzile Ngwenya, is in South Africa after spurning the autocratic ruler’s ‘sexual advances’.
When tracked down by the newspaper Ngwenya said, ‘I am not very free, I should not be talking.’
She added that he did not want to discuss the matter further, saying she might get into trouble or people might ‘get to my parents’
She told the newspaper that her family was visited by a delegation from the Swazi Royal House.
‘They told my mother I had been chosen,’ she said. ‘I decided to make a dash for it and my mother agreed.’
She told the Sowetan that she had no intention of returning to her home country until she was certain that nothing would happen to her.
The Sowetan tried to get confirmation on Ngwenya’s story but was told by Swazi Chief Protocol Office that it could not respond to questions because it had no paper in its fax machine.
I am a 27 year old swazi woman who is disgusted by mswati and the people around him condoning his disgracefull and disgusting behaviour and claiming its a custom thing,custom my foot.Its is annoying and very uncool.His years go up in age, but the years of the women he picks stays the same, if not go down.We bring beautiful girls to this world and risk the claws of this dirty pervert its so pathetic and the educated we seek intelligence from sit there next to him and talk degrading rubbish day in and day out...Mswati is such and outdated fool if his father had 70wives so what?...it was the times that let him, times and economic stance has changed and so is the level of intelligence in people.I have a 7 year old beautiful daughter and thinking of that old farts hands all over her with pervesion makes my skin crawl.To be honest if mswati dares to take my child i would shoot him in cold blood in a public place and i know ill die with him b4 he makes my child his child bearing submissive slave.In actual facts when he picks these girls he doesnt make them wives...so the world knows, he sleeps with them, when u get pregnant then he makes u a wife, if u dont bare a child u stand a chance of mockery and embarassment of being there till another girl comes and is made wife b4 you...he destroys your life them makes a joke of your maternal state.Someone should intervine this so cold king is destroying lives with his high maintance family and a mother who isnt much differant from him.All they do is travel countries all year round asking for donations for the poor swazi people ...I say all the presidents who give mswati donations are condoning his behaviour and allowing him to finance his sick mind, and they pretend they dont know the money is to maintain his life...I hate this man and some body must stop him NOW
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, Mswati is not so old yet... at least with Mugabe it is reasonable to hope he'll just fall over dead one day sooner or later.
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