A rich ugly king will always be handsome

The other day, Daily Nation's naughty little brother, Daily Metro, had a huge photo of Swaziland’s King Mswati III bare chest and in loincloth, on the day of the Reed Dance.

The Reed Dance is an annual event where thousands of bare-breasted “virgins” gather at the royal court, bearing reeds for the queen in a colourful ceremony, that is one of the kingdom’s biggest tourist attractions.

The dance is the occasion when Mswati selects a bride. This year, the 40-year-old king, already the proud husband of 13 wives, was expected to exercise his royal prerogative and pick the 14th.

I look down on the Reed Dance, and believe in a more competitive and democratic way of choosing a bride, but this year, something interesting happened.

The number of maidens who registered for the Reed Dance rose sharply to 60,000 from 40,000 last year.

The curious thing is that the King Mswati we saw in the Daily Metro is unlikely to be many women’s idea of an attractive man.

He was better looking when he was still a young king, and hadn’t put on the weight that has left him with breasts bigger than those of some of the maidens in the parade.

Yet the news agency Reuters reported that; “Tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins competed for Swaziland King Mswati III’s eye on Monday in a traditional Reed Dance.”

Another one, the French agency AFP spoke to a young Swazi woman Landile Hlongwa, a university student, who said: “Being chosen by the king would be a bonus for me. I would like to occupy one of the royal palaces one day.”

If you take it that the increase in the number of maidens registering for the Reed Dance is crudely reflective of the rise in King Mswati’s sex appeal, then his attractiveness increased by 50 per cent!

That cannot be explained aesthetically because, as we have noted, King Mswati is a far cry from his youthful days.

The logical explanation, we are afraid, might not please all men. The enduring appeal of Mswati seems to prove that women, according to experts who study these things, tend to be attracted to powerful men (while men tend to be attracted more by women’s looks or just bits and pieces of them).

However, Mswati is also cynically benefiting from his failure to solve the mountain kingdom’s many problems.

He has been slammed for his lavish lifestyle, while nearly 70 per cent of his subjects live in poverty. Despite that, recently Forbes magazine listed him as the 15th-richest monarch in the world. He was the only African on the list.

Marriage into the King's harem is, therefore, an escape from poverty for many Swazi women.