Mswati III is the king of Eswatini and head of the Swazi Royal Family. He was secretly funded and supported by the government of apartheid-era South Africa. He is known for his practice of polygyny and currently has 15 wives.
About Mswati III in brief
Mswati III is the king of Eswatini and head of the Swazi Royal Family. He was born in Manzini in the Protectorate of Swaziland to King Sobhuza II and one of his younger wives, Ntfombi Tfwala. He is known for his practice of polygyny and currently has 15 wives. His policies and lavish lifestyle have led to local protests and international criticism. Mswati was secretly funded and supported by the government of apartheid-era South Africa. He has promised to continue recognizing Taiwan instead of the People’s Republic of China as of June 2018, and has visited Taiwan seventeen times as of May 2018. The king’s first two wives are chosen for him by the national councillors for him to choose from. He ruled by decree, but did restore the nation’s Parliament, which had been dissolved by his father in order to ensure concentration of power remained with the king. Today he is Africa’s last absolute monarch in the sense that he has the power to choose the prime minister, other top government posts and top traditional posts.
In matters of cabinet appointments, he gets advice from the prime prime minister. In 2004 he promulgated a new constitution that allows freedom of speech and assembly for the media and public, while retaining the traditional Tinkhundla system. In an attempt to mitigate the HIV and AIDS pandemic in 2001, the king used his traditional powers to invoke a time-honoured chastity rite under the patronage of a princess, which encouraged all Swazi maidens to abstain from sexual relations for five years. This was last done under SobhuZA II in 1971, but just two months after the ban, he violated this decree when a 17-year-old lip-hovela was chosen, who became his 13th wife. The Ndlovukati, or Queen Mother, is the mother of 23 of the king’s 15 wives and 23 of his 23 children. She is also the Queen Mother of China and the Queen of the Republic of the Congo.
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This page is based on the article Mswati III published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 21, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
