by Alec Russell
But in the king's defence it is easy to see why from time to time he might have wanted to retire to his palace to let his hair down. From the moment he returned from Sherborne he was smothered in protocol. He was at the head of a system which had somehow survived the twentieth _ century almost un changed. His every move and decision was hedged and con strained. When the Prince of Wales visited, commentators suggested drily that the two men had a lot in common: both fronted institutions in need of reform and both were desperately uncertain how far to go.
Over two tempestuous centuries the Swazi kings have perfected the art of survival, an extraordinary achievement for such a tiny nation in one of the world's most troubled regions. Their record dates back to King Sobhuza I, one of the few regional rulers to survive the mfecane, the devastation wrought by Shaka's hordes. Sobhuza sensibly realized there was a time for courage and a time for prudence, so he ceded territory and retreated to the hills. As soon, however, as Shaka was dead, he set about winning his lost lands back. He is also said to have had a dream before he ever saw a white man in which he saw white-skinned people with hair 'like tassels of cattle' bringing a book and money. His interpretation was to accept the former but be wary of the latter. Consequently missionaries were welcomed but business men were not.
Inspired by his example, the Dlaminis made flexibility their trademark. Subsequent generations saw off the Boers, the Zulus and the British and expanded the kingdom with a mixture of guile, warfare and charm. The only king to try a different tack had disastrous results. Mbandzeni, who ruled until1889, effectively mortgaged the nation to concession-seekers who ended up with monopolies on anything from the then unbuilt railway refreshment rooms to minting money and, most iniquitous of all, the land.
Mswati's father, Sobhuza II, who oversaw independence from Britain in 1968, proved himself worthy of his forefather's name by taking on and ultimately defeating the concessionaires in the law courts. With his watchword 'I have no enemies' he cannily shored up the monarchy against the tide of reform. Even when he suspended the constitution in 1973 and banned political parties, his diplomacy ensured he avoided the opprobrium other leaders would have faced for such an authoritarian step.
Mswati, however, had far less scope for flexibility. Not only was the conflict between tradition and progress becoming increasingly heated, but as a young man he had no clout with the labadzala, the shadowy group of royal relatives and advisors for whom flexibility was merely a way of stalling for time. J.S.M. Matsebula, Sobhuza's private secretary and Swaziland's official historian, was once asked to explain who exactly the elders were. He replied: 'They are men and they are every where.' Mswati's challenge was to accommodate their demands while staving off the dangers of a revolution.
Mswati may well indeed have been thinking of his counsellors' reaction when I asked him what were the most important lessons he had brought home with him from Sherborne. It was an innocent question intended to put him at his ease and I expected the hoary old line about public schools and a sense of fair play. Instead, after a brief pause, he replied, 'Flexibility.' I had little doubt his answer was in due course relayed to the cohorts of half-brothers who had been outside the king's audience chamber as I went in, strutting up and down like the peacocks which lined his lawn, competing with a group of American Peace Corps volunteers to bend his ear.
On my way to the palace I had driven past the centre of the capital, Mbabane, a bustling little town, whose facilities put to shame Africa's larger capitals to the north. Dark-suited executives bustled in and out of glistening glass-fronted offices. It seemed ridiculous to suppose that in such a sophisticated setting the king's brothers really could pose a threat. Then I recalled the words of a royal advisor who had talked to me over tea the previous weekend in his hilltop home.
'You must remember that at the back of his mind is the fate of his grandfather, King Bhunu .. .' Bhunu, I gathered, had made the mistake of falling foul of a royal clique. He died in 1899, after a mere ten years on the throne, of a mysterious 'snake-bite', paving the way for Sobhuza II, who no doubt the labadzala of the day assumed would be a more pliable chap.
Surrounded as he was by the labadzala of the late twentieth century, Mswati unsurprisingly spent much of my interview defending tradition, weighing every word even though he was clearly repeating a well-rehearsed speech.
'Tradition shows where you come from,' he said. 'In the past the Mhlanga would keep girls from getting early pregnancies. They get a chance to talk to one another. If you maintain your tradition you maintain your identity .. .' Multi-party democracy would of course be considered if the people wanted it, but it would not, indeed could not, be rushed. He was, he was at pains to impress upon me, far from being an absolute king.
'The king of Swaziland merely takes decisions. Even on paper I'm not an absolute monarch. Change never stops,' he said.
'Something that is good for this year may not be good for next year. We know multi-partyism but it did not work well. If you do things overnight you make a mess. You must take time and do it right.'
The debate is no stranger to the West, where traditions have had centuries to adapt. But in Africa modernity has come almost overnight, bringing science and enlightenment but also confusion and fear. Now it is lapping at the doors of a last redoubt. The king insists that Swaziland's tinkhundla system of 'popular democracy', in which people discuss issues in regional assemblies, is fairer than the 'tyranny' of multi-partyism where a few demagogues can hold sway. Tinkhundla has parallels with Uganda, where a ban on party politics since the mid-Eighties has brought stability after years of chaos and an opportunity for much-needed economic reform. As with the Ashante kings in Ghana who traditionally were de-stooled by royal councils if they overstepped the mark, so, too, the Dlaminis insist they have checks on despotism: the queen mother has her own court with its own powers; the royal council acts as an inner cabinet. But these 'checks' are an integral part of the status quo.
Prince Masatsele, one of Mswati's elder brothers, a giant of a man with feathers in his hair and a nimble grasp of European history, took me to one side after my interview. He could see only chaos coming from multi-party reform. He jabbed a finger at my notebook as if to a serf: 'Modernity has always been mistaken for wisdom.'
Wearied by endless procrastinations, progressives dismiss such talk as stalling for time and the history of the next 15 years suggested they were right as the kingdom remained resolutely unchanged. The king’s opponents argued that the Swazi system of holding elections without parties was merely an excuse for autocracy and was easily exploited. According to tradition, the national assembly has sixty-five members, ten of whom are appointed by the king and the rest elected by popular vote. The body is supported by a senate of thirty members, twenty of whom are appointed by the king and ten nominated by the national assembly. Progressives have for years insisted the time has come for representative government – but without luck.
'We are run like a family,' Jan Sithole, the secretary general of the Swazi Federation of Trade Unions, told me. 'Confrontation is not our first ticket, but we don't want to fool the world there is meaningful change. It is only cosmetic. And you must remember there is a difference between peace and silence. The problem is the cabals around the king. In change is their demise.'
Sithole has powerful support across the border among South Africa's trade union leaders, who are itching to flex their muscles in support of their 'oppressed comrades'. The risk, however, is that as the royal dyke gives, as it inevitably must, Swaziland's stability will also founder. The challenge is to finesse a smooth transition.
As the millennium dawned, reports from the palace suggested that the king was becoming dangerously complacent, and that, hemmed in by his courtiers and the weight of his 'ancestors', he had lost sight of the need to reform. He is after all endowed with fabled rain-making powers. He smiled when I asked him about kings and clouds.
'It's part and parcel of the culture of being a king. There are certain things that
one can do if you believe in them. Sometimes when you do those things I think it is a matter of faith. If you have enough faith, those things will happen. It's the queen mother that does most of those things but sometimes she does it together with the king ... and the rains do come.'
The foreign minister, the police chief and the head of the army were all listening intently. I cleared my throat and tried again: 'So do you yourself think you can make rain?' The king paused. 'If the Swazis believe that the king can do something then you must go along with this feeling.'
It was a deft answer. But the travails of a fellow 'rainmaker', the legendary 'rain queen' of Duiwelskloof (Valley of the Devil), suggest that Mswati and his putative successors ultimately have a fight on their hands if their authority is to survive.
There was a time when the 'Rain Queen' of the Modjadji Mountains was worshipped thousands of miles from her secluded home. The Modjadji dynasty arrived in the far north of what was to become South Africa over two centuries ago. Such was their reputation that even Shaka left her and her tiny Lovedu tribe well alone. Her crown lands encompassed hundreds of miles of misty valleys. As the cult grew in the nineteenth century, rumours of immortality and fair-skinned beauty spread. Her gender was no barrier in this most patriarchal of regions and she was seen as second only to the Zulu king in the roll call of regional royalty. White travellers paid tribute to her as they headed north in search of the fabled riches of Monomatapa, the ancient Zimbabwean kingdom whence the Modjadji were believed to have come. It was from this mysterious figure that Sir Henry Rider Haggard drew inspiration for the beautiful and immortal warrior queen 'She who must be obeyed' in his novel She.
Nelson Mandela himself is said to have come up against the queen's legendary hauteur when he visited Modjadji Von the campaign for the April 1994 election as a courtesy call to prove his 'traditional' credentials. His aides portrayed the visit as a triumph, but in Modjadji's mountain kraal 250 miles from Johannesburg people remember it rather differently. There the elders still speak a court patois. The queen appears in public only once or twice a year when it is time to beat the sacred drums to hasten or withhold rain. Her advisors recall that, far from welcoming the ANC leader, she turned her back on him and refused to endorse his campaign.
Rather than risk a repeat of Mandela's rebuff I heeded the advice of an anthropologist and, on my way to interview her, stopped at the local store to buy her presents, opting for a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. They had only Black Magic. The assistant wrapped them up in bright paper and I hoped the queen would not take offence.
Victor Modjadji, a cousin and official from the local tribal authority, was waiting at the outer stockade of wooden staves. After taking off my shoes I followed him across the smooth red earth to the veranda of a colonial-style bungalow. The building overlooked twenty grass-roofed rondavels whose occupants were welcoming the new day at the slow and deliberate pace of rural Africa. Fittingly the sky was heavy with rain. As the sun broke through the clouds our guide reappeared and beckoned up the hill to another bungalow, the far side of a second palisade.
A dumpy old woman was squatting in the corner of the veranda. She was draped in a tartan blanket and wore a cheap flowery headscarf. I assumed she was the cleaner taking a break. It was only when our guide coughed that I realized we were in the presence of Modjadji.
I was not the first to make this mistake. Even her advisors conceded that Modjadji V did not take after her fictional forebear whom Rider Haggard, when lodged nearby as a young colonial officer, had described in his usual stirring tones: 'No man who had once seen "She" unveiled and heard the music of her voice and drunk in the bitter wisdom of her words would willingly give up the sight for a whole sea of joys.' Modjadji V was, I was told, the result of an ill-judged union between her mother and a commoner - but she certainly maintained the family tradition for elliptical replies. She answered my questions almost entirely in monosyllables, using her kinsman Victor to interpret even though she understands English.
'I don't remember a thing about his [Mandela's] visit. I don't know a thing about him,' she said. 'I just ask you white people if his government is doing all right.' There was not the hint of a smile. The only time she raised her eyes was when asked about the ANC whose revolutionary water policies were clearly not welcome in Modjadji. For one whose authority waned as rivers rose, the supply of water to hundreds of previously dry com munities was a cause for concern. Still more troubling was a new 'irreverence' coursing through the nation's youth. She once chased a group of ANC youths away from her kraal with a whip.
'These boys don't want to listen. They just want to do their own thing,' she said disconsolately. 'I feel very sad about that. The youth can do anything and they will not get punished.'
In the local Masanalabo secondary school halfway down the mountain, five of the brightest pupils were having a tutorial under a tree. They welcomed the chance of breaking off their studies to talk about the Rain Queen. Brimming with the fire of school-leavers, four of them were adamant that Modjadji was outdated, undemocratic and did not understand the changing order. Her teenage granddaughter Makobo, the next in line, would get short shrift if she tried to maintain the mystique.
But their attitude changed when asked how they would react if the Rain Queen approached them. Only one said he would stay seated. A trifle sheepishly, the others admitted they would kneel down and bow their heads to show respect.
And so, with gentle prompting, a more complex picture emerged. Their complaint was not with the cult but with the Rain Queen's high-handed ways. Modjadji had compromised her powers by praying in a church during a recent drought. She was also unpopular because she summoned locals for lectures on land tenure at strange hours. As for her granddaughter, she was suspect because she drank beer and went to discos, not what a Modjadji should do.
Their teacher deftly intervened. Tradition was, he suggested, part of their identity and they would in time come to terms with it. Parts would be rejected and parts would endure.
'Our tradition is built on taboos,' he said. 'There are some I agree with and some I disagree with. But if you research taboos, you will learn to love them because of tradition. It is in our veins.'
King Mswati might do well to heed the teacher's advice on the need to let traditions come and go. Even in Swaziland tradition has shifted with the times. The Reed Dance had for several generations fallen into abeyance before Sobhuza II reintroduced it, on the model of an old Zulu custom, to stiffen the national spine. Swaziland needs a wily helmsman if it is to reach a solution. Mswati could do worse than travel to Pretoria to consult Nelson Mandela, who, by the end of his presidency, had assumed the mantle of world sage and whose style, whatever his mistakes, was the opposite of Big Man rule. At the end of my allotted time with the king I murmured I did not want to take up more of a busy man's day. He brushed my protestations aside and urged me to continue, as if he were desperate for a chance to escape from the formulas of his position, not to mention his factional court. So we sat chatting about his schooldays while his officers of state nodded their heads - and the labadzala and the American volunteers besieged the door.
Eugene Terre'Bianche, leader of South Africa's neo-Nazi AWB movement, in full apocalyptic flow in 1994 shortly before the collapse of the extreme Right wing. he has to marry Swaziland's traditions with the modernising imperative of progressives for democracy and reform.
9 – Madiba Magic
Nelson Mandela – They Call it Ubuntu
Hemmed in by the drab streets of central Johannesburg, the Carlton Hotel was a dispiriting place. In its heyday it was one of the continent’s premier watering holes. On his release from prison Nelson Mandela could be found in its Three Ships restaurant on many an evening, relaxing with friends or strategizing with colleagues before he lost his freedom again as president. He even celebrated his April 1994 election victory in the hotel ballroom with the stilted jive that he was to make his trademark, before leaving the floor to younger generatio
ns and retiring to bed as elderly gentlemen do.
But within a few years of that most exuberant of parties the hotel was dying. As white businesses fled to Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the city centre took on the tones of the developing world it had tried so long to keep at bay. One by one the Carlton’s suites closed. Then came the news that the Three Ships was to serve its last meal. As I stood at the hotel entrance in December 1997, waiting for a lunch guest, the hawkers and autograph-hunters who used to wait for celebrities had long since followed them north to the multinational chains.
Lunch had been set for 12:15 for 12:30. At 12:14 on the dot a black limousine purred into sight, pausing to allow traffic to pass and then drew up in front of the hotel. The front passenger skipped to the side and opened the back door. A tall silver haired figure manoeuvred his way on to the pavement almost colliding with a gaggle of school-children. As they hurried on their way chattering excitedly, one of them stopped as if to tie a shoelace, glanced at the elderly African in the brightly coloured shirt, looked away and then stared again. There had been no fanfare, no outriders, no flashing lights, and no fenced-off streets. It couldn’t be the world’s most famous and best-loved politician, could it? And yet it was.
I could understand the girl’s confusion. I had just come back from central Africa, where presidents close down their capitals for the slightest errand and keep you waiting as a mark of their power. With Mandela, however, it was a point of honour to make the opposite true. Indeed his office had called me in the middle of the morning to inform me he would be half an hour early. Mercifully for the stress levels of the hotel staff, he changed his mind at the last minute and made a detour via a relation before arriving bang on the time.