Swazi Media Commentary: Prince Majaha

Showing posts with label Prince Majaha. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 December 2020

Lavish lifestyles of Swaziland Royal Family back in spotlight after party video goes viral

The lavish lifestyles of members of the Swaziland (eSwatini) Royal Family are once again under the spotlight after video was posted online showing King Mswati III’s son Prince Majaha being showered with cash at his 30^th birthday party.

King Mswati rules Swaziland as an absolute monarch. In November 2019 he purchased between 13 and 15 luxury Rolls-Royce cars at an estimated cost of up to US$4 million. He also has two private airplanes, at least 13 palaces and fleets of top-of-the-range cars. At his 50th birthday in 2018 he wore a watch worth US$1.6 million and a suit beaded with diamonds that weighed 6 kg. Days earlier he had taken delivery of his second private jet. This one, an Airbus A340, cost US$13.2 to purchase but with VIP upgrades was estimated to have cost US$30 million.

A Facebook page called Swazi Royal Leeches Lifestyle has monitored the lavish spending of the King and numerous of his children. Among other photographs it shows King Mswati’s daughters Siba, Tiyandza and Sikhanyiso with a friend on vacation in Cancun, Mexico. Tiyandza, daughter to King Mswati and Queen LaNgangaza, is wearing a 47 mm 18K Pink Gold Ballon Bleu De Cartier watch worth US$58,500 (E760,500).

Meanwhile, seven in ten of the Swazi population of 1.1 million people live in abject poverty.

The new video shows Prince Majaha smiling and laughing while another prince splashes cash in his direction.

The Economic Freedom Fighters of Swaziland President Ncamiso Ngcamphalala told the Swati Newsweek, a news website, ‘It is embarrassing to see members of the royal family showing off luxurious lifestyle at the expense of more than 60 percent of hungry people of Swaziland. They are showing high levels of arrogance.’

In July 2020, Lisa Peterson, the United States Ambassador to Swaziland called for the kingdom’s constitution to be changed to stop King Mswati’s lavish spending.

She said the US had given more than half a billion dollars in assistance to eSwatini over the past 15 years. ‘It does reach a point where you ask yourself why are we putting this money in. Why are my taxpayer’s dollars going to this, my children’s tax dollars, heaven forbid, my grandchildren’s tax dollars go to pay for healthcare in this country when someone [the King] clearly has a lot of money and doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with it all.’

The Ambassador said people needed to send a message to the King, ‘We expect you to behave the way the rest of us have to behave.’

Friday, 22 September 2017

SWAZI KING’S TORRID LIFE WITH WIVES

Confirmation that King Mswati III, aged 49, is to take a teenager as his latest wife shines the spotlight firmly on the King’s marital history.

His latest choice is Siphelele Mashwama, aged 19, who is the daughter of a Swaziland Cabinet minister, Jabulile Mashwama. In 2013 the King chose an 18-year-old ‘former beauty pageant contestant’ Sindiswa Dlamini as his wife. Both the teenagers are younger than some of the King’s own children.

There is some confusion as to whether King Mswati’s latest bride will be his 14^th or 15^th. The confusion is excusable since the number of wives the King has is considered a state secret in Swaziland and it is ‘un-Swazi’ to talk openly about the King’s polygamy.

The new bride is reported to be a graduate of Swaziland’s Waterford Kamhlaba World University College. She went with the King this week to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in the United States.

She was introduced at the annual Reed Dance where tens of thousands of women described as ‘virgins’ danced bare-breasted for the King.

King Mswati has been ridiculed outside of Swaziland for his likening of teenage women. Media in South Africa nicknamed Sindiswa Dlamini ‘naughty Sindie’.

The Sunday Sun newspaper in South Africa in 2014 reported she had affairs with two of King Mswati’s sons, Prince Majaha and Prince Bandzile, who were both in their early twenties. One unnamed source told the newspaper, ‘Sindi has dated both these boys. She’s a party girl used to having fun.’

Another informant told the Sunday Sun, ‘Sindi is no virgin. She drinks and smokes a lot and has tattoos on parts of her body I cannot mention.’

One source told the newspaper, ‘She is only doing it [marrying the King] because she comes from a poor background.’

The media in Swaziland never report about the King without his permission. This means people across the world are better informed than the King’s subjects, the Swazi people. Most media in the kingdom are under direct state control, opposition political parties are banned as ‘terrorist’ organisations and any political dissent is quickly crushed by police and the army.

In 2011, the Independent group of newspapers in South Africa reported that three of the King’s 13 queens had abandoned him since he took the throne in 1986. And more of his wives were trying to break out of the palace.

The Independent reported, ‘A royal source says some of the queens are frustrated as the King has allowed many months to pass without “visiting” them. They accuse him of seeking his pleasures outside the palace instead.’

The Independent added, ‘This comes after revelations about the recent unceremonious departure from the palace of LaDube, the King’s estranged 12th wife, after she had been accused of having a relationship with former minister of justice and constitutional affairs Ndumiso Mamba. To make matters worse, Mamba was the king’s business confidant and friend.

‘After the affair came to the King’s attention, he denied LaDube conjugal rights, according to insiders. They say he was trying to make palace life intolerable for her so that she would leave.

‘She is officially no longer part of the royal family and has been dumped at her maternal grandmother’s home in Hhohho.’

The newspaper reported, ‘LaDube was the third of Mswati’s wives to leave the palace. She followed LaMagwaza and LaHwala, who both now live in South Africa.

‘LaMagwaza was accused of having a steamy sexual relationship with a South African toy boy. Sources claimed that she was sex starved, as the King would not visit her.’

It added, ‘LaHwala was also neglected by the king who would deny her conjugal rights for six months at a time.’

Monday, 24 August 2015

SWAZI PRINCE AND THE US$40,000 WATCH

News that a Swazi Prince was robbed in a hotel room has exposed something of the lifestyle of King Mswati III’s family.

Prince Majaha, aged 23, was with his father in Gaborone, Botswana, when he went on a drinking spree.

The Voice newspaper in Botswana reported he took a woman, which the newspaper describes as ‘a street vendor’, and a man to his hotel room to continue drinking. When he woke up next morning, the newspaper reported, they had stolen US$5,000 in cash and items, including an iPhone 5 valued at US$500 and a Rodger Dubuis watch, worth US$40,000.

If the valuations reported by the Voice are correct, the watch on its own is worth the equivalent of nearly 55 years income for more than seven in ten of his father’s subjects, who earn less than US$2 per day.

The newspaper did not report why the prince was carrying US$5,000 in cash; the dollar is not the currency of Botswana.

King Mswati rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. Political parties are not allowed to contest elections and freedoms of association and speech are severely curtailed in the kingdom.

In July 2015, it was reported that the budget for King Mswati and his family had been increased by 25 percent and now made up five percent of the overall national budget for Swaziland.

Prince Majaha once made international news when it was reported that King Mswati, aged 45, was to marry a 19-year-old, one-time beauty pageant contestant Sindiswa Dlamini. It was reported that the bride had once dated the King’s son, Prince Majaha.

Thursday, 17 May 2012

FURY AT SWAZI QUEEN’S R½m HOTEL BILL

News that one of Swaziland King Mswati III’s 13 wives is staying at a luxury South African hotel running up a bill of R500,000 (US$60,000) in a month has caused anger in the poverty stricken kingdom.

Queen LaMotsa, the second of the King’s wives, is reported to be staying in the presidential suite of the Westcliff Hotel. She is said to have been there for a month so far. The luxury hotel charges US$2,000 (R17,250) a night.

LaMotsa is in Johannesburg to be near her son Prince Majaha who is in a Netcare hospital in the city after he was critically injured in a motorbike accident last month.

The Star, Johannesburg, reported that news of the Queen’s accommodation expenses and her son’s private healthcare had caused outrage among ordinary Swazis. It reported one, who declined to be named, saying she had recently taken a relative to a public hospital after a car accident, but was offered only painkillers.

‘When the King’s son is involved in an accident, he is rushed to South Africa to get the best treatment at a private hospital. This is unacceptable,’ she said.

Swaziland Diaspora Platform spokeswoman Ntombenhle Khathwane said, ‘We hope the government will realise there are many other Swazis like Prince Majaha who face life-threatening medical emergencies, but do not have the luxury of a prompt medical response like the young prince.

‘These are the Swazis who die every day in ill-equipped Swazi hospitals owing to the government’s neglect of our health system.’

Swaziland Solidarity Network spokesman Lucky Lukhele said the health system had collapsed in Swaziland. He added there was no doubt that it was Swazi taxpayers who were paying for the Queen’s stay at the hotel as well as Majaha’s medical expenses.

The news of the Queen’s high spending is revealed just as King Mswati, who is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, arrived in London to attend a dinner to celebrate the UK Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee. The King is staying at the Savoy Hotel, where rooms reportedly cost £400 (US$630) a night. He is said to have taken an entourage of 30 people with him.

In Swaziland, seven in ten people live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 a day.

For his birthday last month the King received a private jet plane, worth an estimated US$17 million. The King has refused to disclose the source of the gift, leading to speculation that it was paid for out of public funds.

Search This Blog