Why Polygamous King Mswati Is An Embarrassment To Africa And Black People

He is the most famous polygamist in the world today.  He has a net worth of $100 million, 15 wives and 32 children. He is like the King Solomon of today, only that he doesn’t have the WISDOM, the pride and the admiration of the world.

As the last reigning absolute monarchy of Africa, I find King Mswati III to be an embarrassment of Africa and black people. He just gives a very bad image of black leaders especially black royalty. He is the only picture we have today of black Royalty, all other Kings and Queens of Africa are not absolute monarchs so they don’t count as real Royals. All the Empires of Africa collapsed under European invasion. A true monarchy is supposed to have an absolute rule and power over its people, so Mswati is the only King Africa has, the rest are just puppet royals with no power or influence over anything.

Now before I go on to talk about why Mswati gives polygamy such a bad name, I want to talk briefly about the state of his country, Swaziland, now known as the Kingdom of Eswatini. Swaziland is one of the smallest countries of Africa, it only has a population of 1 million people, yet 70% of the population lives in abject poverty.

Some of the Swazi people want to be a republic and believe that the King is the menace to their society.  His children and wives are the only ones who enjoy the wealth of the tiny Kingdom whilst the rest of the people are reduced to being international beggars.

But the reality of the matter is Kings are supposed to live off the sweat and suffering of the ordinary people. That is the protocol of monarchy since time began. When Isreal was a republic and demanded a King, the God of Israel pleaded with them and told them that a King would only oppress them and take their sons and daughters and money and enjoy it, as Kings are supposed to do, but alas, Israel refused freedom and still demanded that they didn’t care if the King took their money and children, they just wanted a King to rule over them like other nations.

That is exactly what Swaziland is like, more than half of the population love their King, they even attack those who are trying to fight for freedom, and they maintain that their King is from God.  Such is the reality of life, so King Mswati will never go anywhere, his chosen son will be the next King and will take a 100 wives and continue to enjoy all the wealth the tiny Kingdom has. People love to be ruled especially by those who have no care for them whatsoever, it’s human nature. So yes, Long Live King Mswati.

What’s sad is that King Mswati has no heart for his people really, he has a very small population to have such extreme poverty. Surely a man with one child is in a better position to feed that child than a man with 10 children. The King only has 1 million people in his country, surely they should not be a charity case of the West. Does he not feel embarrassed that more than half of his people survive on food aid from white people?

The contrast between the life of Mswati’s family and the life of the average citizen of Swaziland/Eswatini is just abnormal. In Europe, even though the royal families live off the sweat of the people, their citizens do not live in abject poverty.

Now about King Mswati multiplying wives, there is nothing morally or spiritually wrong with him taking more than one wife, he is a KIng, and that is what Black Kings have always done since time began. Women also love to be married to a King, and the women of Swaziland queue up to be chosen by the King they do not care how many wives he has. In fact, the beautiful girls of Eswatini grow up with dreams of one day being chosen by the King. It really should be something fascinating, but this black King just makes polygamy seem barbaric, inhuman and cruel.  He should have been such a positive picture of black royalty for the world to behold. If Gay marriages, gender fluids and transgenders are now considered a breath of fresh air to society, why can’t King Mswati, the only real black King of Africa and his many wives be a breath of fresh air to this world?

But for King Mswati, these young beautiful girls he collects for his sexual gratification enter closed doors of no return where life is so unbearable some of them commit suicide. No woman should ever get to the point of committing suicide under your watch, polygamy or no polygamy. If you have many wives and some are in such despair that they take their own lives, then you shouldn’t even have one wife.  When wives fall out of favour with him, I don’t understand why he just doesn’t divorce them. He subjects them to beatings by his own bodyguards. Lord, it’s like a cruel scene out of Game of Thrones where  Joffrey used to make his servants beat his wife.

In 2018, the King’s 8th wife, Inkhosikato LaMasango, killed herself at the age of 37 after she had been under house arrest for three years and was forbidden from attending her own sister’s funeral. During those three years, she was under house arrest, the King refused to see her or to talk to her, she lived alone in a big palace with her two children and saw no friends or family.  The whole idea of being a polygamist is because you LOVE many women, not the opposite.

In 2011, the 12th wife of the King Nothando Dube was placed under house arrest in the Mswati royal residence after being accused of cheating on him. She tried to send emails to neighbouring South African Government, as she was a South African citizen through her father. She also started a blog detailing the abuse of women in Swaziland in the name of tradition. The blogs were deleted. She wanted a divorce after the King would not even see or speak to her for years. Her family and friends were banned from seeing her. A reporter tried to reach out to the palace regarding the allegations by Nothando and an aid answered and denied that the 12th wife of the King was being held a prisoner, “I don’t know about that, if she has any problems, she must address them with the Queen Mother, who will then inform the King. She has a beautiful house, three children, a maid who works for her and cars to take her anywhere she wants. I don’t know what you are talking about,” and the aid hung the phone. Sadly no one knew what became of Nothando Dube, until last year when she died. No official details of her death has ever been released by the palace. I believe it was a suicide, though South African papers allege that she had skin cancer. She was only 31 years old when she died.

The fact that some of his wives seek to escape the royal household is evidence that he is unkind to some of them. Those who escape the Mswati royal household never get to see their children again, the children are given to the other wives to raise. This is what happened to Delisa Magwaza and Putsoana Hwala who both ran away from the palace. Isn’t that a cruel world these royal wives live in, they can’t even seek divorce they have to run away and leave their children behind.

I don’t believe that King Solomon with his 1000 wives ever forbade a mother from raising her own child. His greatest wisdom ever recorded was giving a child to its rightful mother. Even when King Solomon’s most famous concubine the Queen of Sheba left him to go back to her Kingdom, she took her son with her. But King Mswati doesn’t have the heart to let the wives he doesn’t love anymore, or those who leave him by choice, raise their own children. That’s evil.

All that said, the King has his favourite wives and he has his Queen. Like I always say, no matter how many wives a man has, even a 1000 like King Solomon, he will still have that one that he loves the most, the one he goes to for advise and counsel, the one who is more than a lover, the one he seeks comfort from. For King Mswati, it’s Queen LaMbikiza, she is the one who gets the best of King Mswati. Although she is officially considered Mswati’s third wife, she is actually his first wife because she is the first woman he chose for himself. She is known as the King’s first love. She considers herself the most senior wife, and she believes her son will become the next King. As a lawyer, she is a personal advisor to the King,  and is the one whom he makes most of his royal appearances and international visits with.

The other wives see her as a threat, so much that in 2008 she was accused of poisoning the King when he fell seriously ill, she fled from the palace and came to London where her father is the Eswatini ambassador. When the King recovered, he came to London and asked her to come back to the Kingdom, which she did. She said the whole episode was a plot to “get her out of the picture.”

I do like that about King Mswati, I like that he has his Queen, the wife of his youth, I hope that she becomes the next Queen Mother, she has earned that honour.

One of the main advantages of having a monarchy is tourism. A country is supposed to benefit from having royalty. England especially and other European countries have mastered this well.

People love royalty and are fascinated by it because its an epitome of what they all want to be. Apparently, the UK Royal Family brings in over a billion a year to the UK economy in tourism. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle attract over 2 million visitors a year. Royals weddings in the UK also generate good revenue to the economy, for example, Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding apparently provided a boost of 1.4 billion to the UK. These figures are debatable of course, but I believe there is some truth to it.

Then you have King Mswati, the only remaining absolute King Africa has, living his luxurious lifestyle in the privacy of his royal courts with no interest in bringing any positive tourism to the country or the continent. The only news which is reported about him is the disturbing stories of abuse and suicide.

King Mswati doesn’t understand the power of PR, he doesn’t understand that as the only black King the world has, he needs to have a good name. The Queen of England,  with all the atrocities the British Empire has committed worldwide, which is far worse than the moral crimes of Mswati,  remains the most adored and loved human being on this earth. She has mastered the art of getting her enemies to bow before her. She has mastered the art of writing her own narrative and letting the world subscribe to her own story.

Like how the epic Game Of Thrones ended, Tyrion said, “The greatest King is the one who has the ability to tell the story.”

The world is getting ready for the real black King, the one who will tell the story to the very end.

The Genesis Of The Revelation By

Mary-Tamar was Jean Gasho

PS, There is also no freedom of speech in Swaziland, if I was a Swazi I would be arrested for writing this article. Some journalists have been arrested and killed in jail for speaking against King Mswati.