But here the tale takes a more modern twist. Lindiwe Dlamini, the mother of the chosen, Zena Mahlangu, 18, doesn’t want her daughter to be added to the king’s harem. She wants her to finish her final year of high school and become an industrial psychologist instead. So, in a country where the king is above the law, Dlamini has launched the first-ever court challenge against Africa’s last absolute monarch.
The Mahlangu case–now being heard in the country’s High Court–does more than pit human rights against customary law. At the heart of the story that has gripped the region is a battle between tradition and modernity–a split over whether to preserve the past or embrace the future. In this tiny agrarian country of green hills, 1 million people and conflicting cultural forces, ancient customs and social structures prevail against a growing tide of popular pressure to modernize. Although in theory the king follows the wishes of his people–as gleaned by local chiefs–in practice the young monarch is said to be controlled by powerful, conservative tribal elders.
Forward-looking Swazis hoped that King Mswati–educated at Britain’s elite Sherbourne School–would respect rights like gender equality and advance Swaziland politically. Instead, he has crushed political protest, dragged his heels on constitutional reform, upheld a 1973 ban on political parties and refused democratic elections." In addition, he presides over a corrupt system of patronage and skin-deep democracy that allows the royal family to pick MPs, senators and cabinet ministers.
But the modern world couldn’t be kept at bay forever. If nothing else, this week’s court hearing in the capital of Mbabane shows the party-loving king can no longer expect meek subjugation to the polygamous rule which allowed his father, King Sobhuza II, to have more than 100 wives during his 60-year reign. (It is for this reason that so many Swazis bear the royal surname of Dlamini.)
The current bridal saga began some seven weeks ago when the king continued the Swazi tradition of choosing Mahlangu–together with two other young women–from among those taking part in the reed dance. The aim of the ceremony is to give the ruler his pick of royal brides; being chosen is usually considered an honor. But Mahlangu’s mother says she did not know her daughter was taking part and was horrified when, two weeks after the dance, two palace aides whisked her daughter from their home. “The experience has been a terrible strain for the whole family,” Dlamini told NEWSWEEK. “Zena is an outgoing, very happy, kind and considerate girl. We miss her very badly.”
Dlamini is now fighting in court to get her daughter back. Since the king cannot be charged, she brought her case against the two aides who took her to the palace. There it has followed a tortuous path. Dlamini believes that her outgoing, determined daughter–who isn’t answering her cell phone–is being held against her will. There are reports that she wants to marry the playboy king, but the three judges presiding over the case says they need to hear that from her in person.
The royal family, however, refuses to send Mahlangu to court and has barred court-appointed lawyers from entering the royal guesthouse behind the king’s sprawling brown palace. “It’s nothing but speculation that Zena wants to be there,” says Peter Dunseith, the lawyer for Mahlangu’s mother. “She’s an impressionable teenager who’s been held for three weeks. We want her back with her family so that she can make decisions about her future in good time and in a loving home environment.”
In another twist this week, the royal family ordered the high court to dismiss the case, saying the labadzala (elders) had decided it ought to be dealt with under tribal law. To ensure the royal order was taken seriously, the king had the message personally delivered to Chief Justice Stanley Sapire by Attorney General Phesheya Dlamini and the uniformed heads of the police, army and correctional services. “The gist of the message was that we should dismiss the case, and if we found ourselves unhappy with this we could resign our position,” Sapire said Thursday.
The judge, in a move that could cost him his job, refused. He has now ordered the two lawyers to try again to talk to Mahlangu before the hearing resumes next Tuesday. The German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, which says it has spoken to Mahlangu, reported this week that she was happy with her situation. “Not even the lawsuit my mother is currently pursuing will make me change my mind about getting married to the king,” she told the news agency by phone, repeatedly referring to Mswati as her husband. “I am happy with everything, and I have even been taken shopping. I am now preparing to take my place in the royal household and become a good wife to my husband.”
Both the court and Dlamini are unconvinced. Dlamini feels her daughter is too young to marry and wants her to write her final A-level (college-entry) exams later this year. She also says Mahlangu will be disadvantaged in the royal family because she is a twin, who under tradition cannot sire a future king, and she is not pure Swazi: her father was a South African of the Ndebele tribe.
More importantly, Dlamini argues that King Mswati III has broken traditional rules–and even one of his own decrees. She says he did not obtain the family’s permission to marry her daughter, as required by custom, and that he is violating his own reinstatement of the old chastity rite umchwasho, which restricts sex for girls under 19 in an effort to slow down a tide of HIV/AIDS that has infected one in three Swazi adults. (Under-19s who take part in the reed dance have to wear special “hands-off” decorative tassels, but Swazi papers report that the king has paid cows as self-imposed fines for picking 18-year-old participants.) Dlamini also claims a right to decisions affecting her daughter until she reaches 21, the Swazi age of majority for girls.
Swazis themselves are at odds over the case. “This is our way,” says Mandla Dlamini, a traditionalist who attended court clad in bright wraps and strips of fur. “It is in customary law that each year the king chooses brides at the reed dance, and they are happy to be picked.” Wilson Mdluli, head of the Swaziland National Progressive Party–an opposition group banned from competing in elections–disagrees. “This is a violation of human rights,” he says. “Zena’s life is being wasted.”
At the Emlalatini Development Centre, the school where Mahlangu was preparing for her upcoming exams, students are concerned, too. “What the king is doing is just wrong,” says one. Nor does the Swazi case have implications for just this small kingdom tucked between South Africa and Mozambique. Across the continent, Africans are divided between those who want to remain under an intricate, unequal, feudal culture and a swelling army of urbanites who prefer a Western rights-based democracy. Finding a compromise will take years, perhaps decades–and certainly won’t be resolved in the weeks left before Mahlangu’s final tests.
