Residents in Swaziland have
been fined for not attending community meetings and paying ‘homage’ to their
chief.
About 20 families have been
affected in in the Southern Hhohho region, according to a newspaper report in
Swaziland.
It happened at Mvutshini
where 20 homesteads were fined E900 each (US$64) ‘for not attending community
meetings and not paying homage to the Ezulwini chiefdom,’ the Observer on Saturday reported (25
November 2017).
In Swaziland seven in ten
people live in abject poverty with incomes of less than US$2 per day.
The newspaper added, ‘They
were also given at least seven days to each settle the amount or they would
face the wrath’ of the main chiefdom at Ezulwini where Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo
is chief.
In Swaziland chiefs are
appointed by King Mswati III, who rules the kingdom as sub-Saharan Africa’s
last absolute monarch. Chiefs are considered to be his direct representative
and they have enormous power over their subjects. In June 2017 Chief Somtsewu
Motsa of Lushishikishini threatened too banish all single mothers from the area
he rules over to ease the burden to the community of children born out of
wedlock.
The Observer on Saturday (17 June 2017) said Chief Somtsewu Motsa had
called a meeting of all ‘single mothers, pastors and those known to have
impregnated girls without marrying them’. The newspaper reported, ‘Reliable
sources said the traditional authorities were threatening to evict anyone to be
seen to defy the chief’s order.’
This was not an isolated
incident. It is through chieftaincies that the King maintains control of his
people and chiefs do his bidding at a local level. People know not to get on
the wrong side of the chief because their livelihood depends on his goodwill.
In some parts of Swaziland the chiefs are given the power to decide who gets
food that has been donated by international agencies. The chiefs quite
literally have power of life and death in such cases with about a third of the
population of Swaziland receiving food aid each year.
Chiefs can and do take revenge
on their subjects who disobey them. There is a catalogue of cases in Swaziland.
For example, Chief Dambuza Lukhele of Ngobelweni in the Shiselweni region
banned his subjects from ploughing their fields because some of them defied his order to build a
hut for one of his wives.
Nhlonipho Nkamane Mkhatswa,
chief of Lwandle in Manzini, the main commercial city in Swaziland, reportedly stripped a woman of her clothing in the middle of a street in full view of the public
because she was wearing trousers.
In November 2013, the newly-appointed Chief Ndlovula of Motshane threatened to evict nearly 1,000 of
his subjects from grazing land if they did not pay him a E5,000 (about US$500
at the time) fine, the equivalent of more than six months income for many.
Chiefs are given stipends
by the national treasury, but not salaries, and community members pay their
allegiance to chiefs by weeding and harvesting their fields, and constructing
the traditional mud and thatch huts usually found at chiefs’ homesteads.
See also
KING'S DEFIANT SUBJECTS 'WILL BURN'
CHIEF FORCES SUBJECTS TO GREET KING
BULLYING CHIEFS RULE IN SWAZILAND
CHIEF MAKES WOMAN IN PANTS STRIP
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/12/chief-makes-woman-in-pants-strip.html
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