Chicago Tribune - October 30, 2002
Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent

MBABANE, Swaziland -- King Mswati III, Africa's last ruling monarch, has nine wives and absolute power in this fairy-tale mountain kingdom.

"The truth is his majesty is not above the law. His majesty is the law," said Phesheya Dlamini, the attorney general of Swaziland.

But the young, cape-clad monarch's tight rein on his kingdom and Swazi tradition itself are facing a challenge this month from an unlikely adversary: A single mother who objects to the man known as Swaziland's Ngwenyama, or lion, laying his paws on her only daughter.

Each September, thousands of the kingdom's teenage girls, clad only in jewelry and small beaded skirts, gather to dance for their ruler, and he sometimes chooses a new bride from among them. This year, the 34-year-old king chose three. But when his emissaries picked up 18-year-old Zena Mahlangu from her school and whisked her to the royal complex, her mother filed kidnapping charges.

The scandal, now making its way through Swaziland's courts, has rocked the tiny tradition-bound nation, pitting democracy campaigners against royalists and traditionalists against modernists. The kingdom is increasingly puzzled about where human rights and global values should fit into an old-fashioned, no-party state.

"Is tradition a violation of human rights? That's very hard to answer," said Richard Patricks, a historian at the National Museum. "The question is whether we can have an executive monarchy and democracy at the same time."

Swazi rulers have a long tradition of taking as many wives as they like with or without the consent of the women's parents. Mswati's father, King Sobhuza II, married 70 times, including one bride whose parents initially spirited her out of the country in an attempt to hide her from the monarch.

But most Swazi families have traditionally welcomed or at least acceded to royal proposals, considering them an honor and a chance to gain prestige or a better life.

That is now changing in Swaziland, a landlocked country of just over 1 million people. Mswati III, whose Cabinet is attempting to buy him a $45 million jet while thousands of his subjects in the drought-ravaged country go hungry, is not the most beloved of the nation's long line of rulers. While rural Swazis largely cling to tradition, an increasing percentage of families are urban and educated and have daughters who see little appeal in polygamous court life.

"I want a man for myself!" said a young woman in a short black skirt and lace top, flipping through a fashion magazine in the nation's capital. Urban girls, a friend of hers noted, are not interested in bearing potential royal heirs.

Since disappearing from school on Oct. 9, the king's newest fiance has had no official contact with the outside world, as is the country's custom during her preparations for marriage. Swaziland's newspapers reported sightings of Mahlangu out shopping recently, smiling in the company of the king's men. In a furtive cell phone call to friends--one that women's groups believe may have been stage-managed--she reported that she was very happy and was going to make Mswati "the happiest man on earth."

Lindiwe Dlamini, Mahlangu's mother and a manager at the Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications Corp., says she won't believe any of it until she has a chance to talk to her daughter, who had been starting college-level studies in industrial psychology.

"I don't want the king to be my daughter's husband," she told local newspapers, after charging the king's men with abduction. "She has other plans for her life."

Just how difficult the case may be to resolve came clear Tuesday, when a pair of female lawyers appointed by the Swaziland's chief justice to interview Mahlangu showed up in court saying they had been denied access to her.

Dlamini's lawyer argues that the daughter's disappearance is a simple abduction case under Swazi law and that because she is under the legal age of 21 she must be returned immediately to her mother, regardless of the daughter's wishes.

Under Swazi law, however, the king cannot be charged with any wrongdoing, and the men who picked up Mahlangu say she is no longer in their hands and thus they cannot return her. That has left Chief Justice Stanley Sapire with little room to maneuver and little power to enforce any order he makes.

On Tuesday, before a courtroom packed with royal observers and women's rights advocates, he complained that the monarchy was dragging its feet and that "the protraction of this matter is doing no one any good." But he stopped short of demanding Mahlangu's return.

Many in the crowd said finding justice was going to be a delicate matter. While by law the king is always right, "the mother has no access to her and that is wrong," said Lindiwe Mkhabela, a court observer who has a 13-year-old daughter.

The king's elder brother, Prince Masatsela, has been less diplomatic.

"There is no one except God who can defy the king's order. Who is this woman to take the king to court?" he reportedly said.

Women's groups say a ruling for the king would set a dangerous precedent that might allow other men to kidnap young brides. At the very least, they say, the king's latest wife grab sends the wrong message to a nation where he has taken measures to try to stem the AIDS virus that has infected 1 in 4 people age 15 to 49.

Less than two years ago, the monarch barred the kingdom's teenage girls from having sex for five years, in an effort to slow the spread of AIDS, then promptly selected a 17-year-old as his ninth bride, paying a one-cow penalty. This year he commandeered three teenagers, though only Mahlangu's family has objected.

"He's violating his own rules," charged Lamceblo Dlamini, a legal rights expert at Women and Law in Southern Africa, an organization promoting sex equality. "The women of Swaziland are getting to the point where we have to stand up and say we won't take this anymore. Enough is enough."

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