a million cattle and goats are grazed on anteed the kingdom sovereignty in 1881. Geography the non-cropped land. Swaziland was a British protectorate un- Ninety-seven percent of Swaziland’s til 1968, when it gained its independence in the population is African. Indigenous siSwati and a new constitution allowing a multi- News™ (a dialect of Bantu) and English are the party democracy. official languages. Sixty percent of the In 1973, the Swazi Mswati II population is Christian, 10 percent is revoked the constitution and assumed Muslim and the remainder holds indig- full power. Five years later, a new consti- Neal G. enous beliefs. The country’s largest city is tution was written, banning political par- Lineback Manzini and its capital is Mbabane (ad- ties, but it was never accepted. Upon King ministrative), but both have only about Mswati II’s death, his son King Mswati III 50,000 people. Tragically, one-third of the took power in 1986 at only 18 years of age. SWAZILAND: TINY population has HIV or AIDS, resulting in Although King Mswati III was edu- , VAST a high death rate. cated in the , he has con- Prior to the Berlin Conference of 1884, tinued his father’s political traditions. Ac- CORRUPTION when Africa was divided into colonies cording to Parade, recently, he arbitrarily controlled by the major European powers chose his 10th wife from among youthful The world media is increasingly iden- of the day, most of Africa consisted of dancers at a public performance. When tifying brutal and economically corrupt kingdoms. Some were large, such as the the young woman’s mother filed a law- dictators. The king of Africa’s tiny kingdom of Ghana in West Africa, while suit, Mswati declared that the Swazi courts Swaziland is a prime example. others were very small, such as Swaziland. were forbidden from interfering with the Parade magazine recently focused During the process of drawing political king’s orders. The news stirred a whirl- media attention on Swaziland for having lines across the continent, European lead- wind of protests from around the world. the world’s tenth worst dictator (Feb. 22, ers superimposed political boundaries In an effort to appease world opin- 2004). The country and its brutal dictator across the continent with little concern for ion, Mswati personally approved a new enable us to analyze the unique human the historical boundaries separating ex- constitution. However, it still bans politi- and physical geography of a tiny African isting most African cultures. Swaziland’s cal parties, permits the death penalty for kingdom with all of the problems associ- boundaries, however, delineated the virtually any criminal offenses and pro- ated with an all-powerful king. Swazi kingdom. vides debtors’ prisons. Swaziland is a small, independent The royal House of Swaziland dates Such capricious proclamations go landlocked country located in southern back at least 400 years and is today one of against the basic tenets of human rights. Africa. Situated between Africa’s last remaining . The According to Parade, this places King and the Republic of , Swazi people are a Bantu tribe driven Mswati III in the same dubious league Swaziland occupies a position on the east- across the Drakensberg to present-day with the worst living-legend dictators, ern slopes of the Drakensberg (moun- Swaziland in 1820 by Zulu tribes to the including Korea’s Kim Jong II, Burma’s tains). Its landscape, however, is com- north. The British and South Africans guar- Than Shwe, ’s Hu Jintao, posed of broad belts of pla- Zimbabwe’s Robert teau-like landforms. With a Swaziland’ s Corrupt Leadership Mugabe, Saudi Arabia’s total area of only 6,704 Crown Prince Abdullah, square miles (17,363 sq. NAMIBIA Equatorial Guinea’s km.), which is about the size BOTSWANA Teodoro Obiang Nguema, of seven average U.S. coun- MOZAMBIQUE Sudan’s Omar Al-Bashir, ties, Swaziland is Africa’s Turkmenistan’s second smallest country af- Mbabane Saparmurat Niyazov and ter Gambia. SWAZILAND Manzini Cuba’s Fidel Castro. All Swaziland’s 2000 weld unlimited power population of about 1.2 mil- over their respective lion is approximately 80 g r populations. percent rural. This rural LESOTHO e And that is Geogra- population mostly lives in b s phy in the News™. March small villages and is en- n 12, 2004. #719. gaged in primary activities, e k including farming, forestry a SOUTH AFRICA r (The author is a Geog- and mining activities. Only D raphy Professor at Appala- e 11 percent of the land area T h chian State University, is arable, producing a few Boone, NC.) commercial crops in addi- Cape Town 0 500 mi tion to garden staples. A 0 500 km Additional source: combined total of more than www.parade.com ©2004 Geography in the News 3/12/04 -- P. Larkins

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