A rich ugly king will always be handsome

Thus Tenene Dlamini, 16, told Reuters; “I came here to dance. I wish the king would have chosen me because it’s nice at the king’s place. The wives live a nice life.”

Critics also say Mswati sets a bad example by encouraging polygamy and teenage sex — he is the one who turned the Reed Dance into a grand event in 1999 — by picking brides during the ceremony, in a country where about 40 percent of adults live with HIV.

Without being unfeeling or frivolous, we have to point out that Swaziland’s infections rates are ironical because a company called YKK Zippers is based in its “neighbour” Lesotho.

YKK Zippers manufactures nearly 100 per cent of the world’s jeans zippers. Maybe there is a message there for Swaziland and its king.

As an absolute monarch, everything in Swaziland basically belongs to Mswati, so we can’t hurry to accuse him of pinching from the Treasury. That is unlike the folks who have been linked to corruption in Kenya in recent years.

But there is a ray of hope for them, following the calls by many people, including former anti-graft czar John Githongo recently, that they be granted amnesty.

We say a ray of hope, because there are also calls for those who were involved in election violence, early this year, to be granted amnesty. The ODM says they were “freedom fighters” who were protesting against a stolen election.

The PNU says they were cold-blooded murderers, who planned the killings before the dispute over the elections broke out.

There’s a perception that most of those who support calls to grant the corrupt amnesty are either PNU supporters or leaders.

On the other hand, that it’s mostly ODM supporters and leaders who favour amnesty for those being held on suspicion of participating in violent actions in the election crisis early in the year. If that be the case, then we could have a deal soon.

The PNU gets amnesty on corruption, and in exchange ODM gets amnesty on election violence.

There are precedents for both. India granted amnesty to people who had cheated on taxes, in exchange for them getting their act together and beginning to pay.
There was such a huge uptake, the Treasury was just overflowing with money from the old tax cheats. And South Africa, even Rwanda, gave amnesty to those who had killed, and got its groove back.