A chief
in Swaziland has threatened too banish all single mothers from the area he
rules over.
This was
to ease the burden to the community of children born out of wedlock, local
media reported.
The Observer on Saturday (17 June 2017) said
Chief Somtsewu Motsa of Lushishikishini called a meeting of all ‘single
mothers, pastors and those known to have impregnated girls without marrying
them’.
The
newspaper reported, ‘Reliable sources said the traditional authorities were
threatening to evict anyone to be seen to defy the chief’s order.’
It added,
‘The traditional leadership is said to have issued the order for all single
mothers and pastors to attend without fail the meeting and failure to do so meant
eviction from Lushikishini.’
The
newspaper could not get a comment from the chief.
Chiefs in Swaziland are the
representative of King Mswati III who rules the kingdom as sub-Saharan Africa’s
last absolute monarch. Swazi chiefs have enormous power and it is through
chieftaincies that the King maintains control of his people and chiefs do his
bidding at a local level. People know not to get on the wrong side of the chief
because their livelihood depends on his goodwill. In some parts of Swaziland
the chiefs are given the power to decide who gets food that has been donated by
international agencies. The chiefs quite literally have power of life and death
in such cases with about a third of the population of Swaziland receiving food
aid each year.
Chiefs can and do take revenge on
their subjects who disobey them. There is a catalogue of cases in Swaziland.
For example, Chief Dambuza Lukhele of Ngobelweni in the Shiselweni region
banned his subjects from ploughing their
fields because
some of them defied his order to build a hut for one of his wives.
Nhlonipho Nkamane Mkhatswa, chief
of Lwandle in Manzini, the main commercial city in
Swaziland, reportedly stripped a woman of her clothing
in the
middle of a street in full view of the public because she was wearing trousers.
In November 2013, the newly-appointed Chief
Ndlovula of
Motshane threatened to evict nearly 1,000 of his subjects from grazing land if
they did not pay him a E5,000 (about US$500 at the time) fine, the equivalent
of more than six months income for many.
Chiefs are given stipends by the
national treasury, but not salaries, and community members pay their allegiance
to chiefs by weeding and harvesting their fields, and constructing the
traditional mud and thatch huts usually found at chiefs’ homesteads.
See also
KING'S DEFIANT SUBJECTS 'WILL BURN'
CHIEF
FORCES SUBJECTS TO GREET KING
BULLYING
CHIEFS RULE IN SWAZILAND
CHIEF MAKES WOMAN IN PANTS STRIP
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