King Mswati III, the absolute monarch of impoverished
Swaziland, wore a watch worth US$1.6 million to his 50th birthday
party. This was in addition to a suit
beaded with diamonds that weighed 6 kg.
Meanwhile, teachers are warning that children may
starve because the Swazi Government cannot afford to pay to feed them. The
charity Oxfam called Swaziland the most unequal country in the world in a
report.
Days before his birthday King Mswati took delivery of
his second private jet plane. This one, an A340-300
Airbus had a purchase price of US$13.2 million,
but with VIP upgrades it reportedly cost about US$30 million.
A picture of the King with his watch and suit was
published on Facebook
by a group that monitors the spending of the Swazi Royal
Family.
 |
| King Mswati III with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and one of his 13 wives, Inkhosikati LaMotsa during at his 50th birthday party. Picture: Swazi Royal Leeches Lifestyle Facebook page |
The watch is a Jacob & Co Grand Baguette timepiece.
The Jacob
& Co website describes the watch as, ‘polished
18K white gold invisibly set with 360 baguette diamonds 13.20ct.; five crowns
invisibly set with baguette diamonds 3.50ct.; five sapphire glasses with
transparent anti-reflective treatment; circular satin-finished with hand
engraving case back. Dial: Local time and four time zone dials for New York,
L.A., Tokyo and Paris.’
The website
puts the cost of the piece at US$1,620,000, which is
about E21 million in local currency. This is more than the financial aid given
to Swaziland each year by the European Union to pay for free primary school
education.
 |
The timepiece in detail with the $1,620,000 price tag.
Picture: Jacob and Co website
|
In Swaziland seven in ten of King Mswati’s estimated 1.1
million subjects live in abject poverty on incomes less than the equivalent of
US$2 per day. The King has 13 palaces and fleets of top-of-the-range BMW and
Mercedes cars.
Children in Swaziland have
been told by teachers to prepare themselves for starvation as the government failed to deliver free food to
schools over the past year. At the heart of the crisis is the Swazi
Government’s inability to pay its suppliers. In the March 2018 Budget, Finance
Minister Martin Dlamini said the government owed E3.1 billion and was trying to find a way to pay its bills.
As a result of unpaid
bills, suppliers have stopped delivering food, and medicines.
Electricity supplies to government offices, law courts, police stations,
libraries, media houses, and border posts
have been cut.
In 2017, the global charity Oxfam named Swaziland as
the most unequal country in the world in a report called
Starting With People, a human economy approach to inclusive growth in Africa that
detailed the differences in countries between the top most earners and those at
the bottom.
The Oxfam report stated the government, which is
handpicked by King Mswati, ‘failed to put measures in place to tackle inequality,
with poor scores for social spending and progressive taxation, and a poor
record on labour rights’.
The extent of poverty in Swaziland has been reported
extensively outside of the kingdom. In its annual report on human rights in the
kingdom, published in March 2017, Amnesty
International said two thirds of the people in Swaziland
continued to live below the poverty line and that around half the population
said they often went without food and water, and over a third said that medical
care was inadequate.
In a report in May 2017, the World
Food Program estimated 350,000 people of Swaziland’s
population were in need of food assistance. WFP helped 65,473 of them. It said
it was regularly feeding 52,000 orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) aged
under eight years at neighbourhood care points. About 45 percent of all
children in thought to be OVCs.
It reported chronic malnutrition affected 26 percent
of all children in Swaziland aged under five.
See also
SWAZI
KINGS AND QUEENS OF BLING
‘CHILDREN
COULD SOON DIE OF HUNGER’
SWAZI
GOVT FAILS ON POVERTY: OXFAM
KING
WEARS SUIT BEADED WITH DIAMONDS
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/swazi-king-wears-suit-of-diamonds.html
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