Kingdom of Eswatini

Kingdom of Eswatini Umbuso weSwatini
Flag Coat of arms
Capital	Mbabane (executive) Lobamba (legislative)
Largest city	Manzini
Official languages	English, Siswati
Government	Absolute monarchy
• King	Mswati III
• Queen	Ntfombi
• Prime Minister	Russell Mmiso Dlamini
Area
• Total	17,364 km²
Population
• 2020 estimate	1,160,164

Eswatini, officially the Kingdom of Eswatini, is a small country in Southern Africa. It is the only absolute monarchy in Africa. Until 2018, it was known as Swaziland. The Communist Party of Swaziland was banned in 2011 but still operates with its headquarters in South Africa. Eswatini has a high level of poverty, low life expectancy, and the worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world.

History

Precolonialism

Lion Cavern

Lion Cavern revealed evidence of the sustained extraction of specularite and hematite (red ochre) from the bedrock and cavern walls. It was determined that the site was to be around 41,050 BCE, which makes it the oldest known site of intentional mining in the world. Ochre possesses minimal utility; its value is almost entirely symbolic, ritual, and cosmetic. The labour-intensive mining of this mineral at the Lion Cavern indicates a high degree of symbolic and religious abstraction. These extracted pigments were occasionally transported over long distances exceeding 100 kilometres.

But also the existence of extensive exchange networks, overlapping territories, or wide-ranging migration routes operating tens of thousands of years ago. This society had no evidence of private accumulation, social stratification or any apparatus of coercion stood above these societies. It was a classless society organised on the basis of kinship where production was communal; distribution was governed by custom and kinship obligation.

Tembe Kingdom

The origin of the Swazi people is rooted in the broader linguistic and demographic shifts of the Bantu migrations. The ancestors of the Swazi belong to the Nguni, by the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had settled around present Maputo, Mozambique. The Dlamini lineage were aristocrats, as evidenced by their herds, its capacity to command the labour and the loyalty of followers.

This map details the precolonial trade networks centered around the Tembe Kingdom, illustrating the inland flow of brass, beads and cloth from the coastal hub of Delagoa Bay.

King Dlamini I, established the Nkosi Dlamini as the royal clan of Embo-Nguni, though they were underneath the Tembe Kingdom as vassals. After the establishment, they continuously migrated southward and inland, driven by environmental pressures, the search for superior, disease-free grazing lands for their expanding herds. Though it was under King Dlamini III who began this migration, this migration was accompanied with Ndwandwe lineage which would end in a centuries-long history of strategic intermarriage. The intermarriages functioned as a tool for consolidating wealth, sealing military alliances, and regulating competition over grazing lands and tribute.

KaNgwane Kingdom

King Ngwane III was the one to establish the current geographic footprint with the state of KaNgwane. Ngwane III was Dlamini III's son and ruled from approximately 1745 to 1780. The followers of the Dlamini kings increasingly identified themselves corporately as BakaNgwane. Ngwane III pushed further inland, establishing settlements south of the Pongola River however they were forced to retreat and established the royal capital (Zombodze) in the Shiselweni region of southern Eswatini.

Here, Ngwane III systematically absorbed willing recruits from indigenous clans residing in the area and violently expelled potential rivals; these clans who submitted to Dlamini authority did so under the compulsion of superior military force and the material necessity of securing access to land and protection.

In this same period, we see formalised the highly structured royal institutions of the KaNgwane specifically embedding the role of the Ndlovukati (Queen Mother) as a central, constitutional pillar of the monarchy with a dual monarchy between the Ngwenyama (lion) and the Ndlovukati. Though The Ndlovukati was, by custom, never a Dlamini by birth; she was drawn from a strategic allied clan and it functioned more as a mechanism which allowed binding allied chiefly lineages to the Dlamini centre, for regulating succession disputes within the royal house, and for ensuring that the competing interests of the aristocracy did not tear the state apart.

The Ndlovukati's authority,  her veto power, her control of sacred rainmaking medicines, her own regiments were instruments of intra-ruling-class management. Upon Ngwane III's death, the political stability of the fledgling state was maintained by his senior widow, Queen Regent LaYaka Ndwandwe, who held absolute power until their son Ndvungunye came of age.

King Ndvungunye reigned from roughly 1780 to 1815, and led a demographic and military build-up across the region under a period where the people were beginning to experience severe environmental and political stress alongside the Madlatule famine. During this, Ndvungunye expanded the influence of KaNgwane primarily through diplomatic marriages and the absorption of refugee populations fleeing the violence to the south.

Ndvungunye provided the Simelane with land at KoNtjingila and was given two daughters of the former Simelane chief. He married both the daughters, Lojiba Simelane (main wife) and her younger sister Somnjalose Simelane, who acted as an inhlanti (co-wife). The Simelane were not integrated as equals; they were subordinated as a client clan, obliged to provide military service in exchange for land and protection. The refugee populations absorbed during this period were similarly integrated as subordinate commoners, expanding the base of surplus extraction available to the Dlamini elite.

Ndvungunye's reign ended when he was struck and killed by lightning, which caused a succession crisis. Ndvungunye was succeeded by his son, King Sobhuza I also known as Somhlolo (‘’Man of Mysteries’’). Born around 1788, Sobhuza I ascended the throne in 1815. Due to the intricacies of Swazi royal custom, his aunt, Lojiba Simelane, took on the role of Ndlovukati and Queen Regent because she was the main wife, despite Somnjalose the co-wife being the biological mother.

Sobhuza I's reign happened simultaneously with the Mfecane, a period of socio-political crisis, endemic warfare, and forced mass migration. The Mfecane happened as a result of competition over grazing lands, the control of trade routes, the environmental pressures of the Madlatule famine, and the ambitions by emerging aristocracies to concentrate cattle wealth and subjugate neighbouring people.

Swazi warrior dressed in traditional ceremonial attire, wearing an Umnyatfelo headdress. Picture taken circa 1900, by the Trappist Monastery in Mariannhill.

Sobhuza I initiated a massive retreat. He abandoned the southern heartlands and moved his capital, his herds, and his followers north into the mountainous, defensible terrain of the Mdzimba Mountains and the Ezulwini Valley in central Eswatini. Here, he established a new royal capital, which he also named Zombodze and a spiritual capital at Lobamba (present capital of Eswatini). By relocating the centre of the state, Sobhuza preserved the Dlamini aristocracy's control over its herds, its followers, and its tributary base.

The territory into which Sobhuza I retreated was occupied by the Sotho and Nguni clans who had lived in the central and northern regions long before the Dlamini arrival. Once they arrived they called these indigenous groups the Emakhandzambili ("those found ahead"). Within these Emakhandzambili, the Magagula, Maseko, Mnisi, and Nkambule clans. Sobhuza I used a dual strategy of military conquest and diplomatic assimilation to incorporate these groups.

The Maseko under their chief Cece, submitted without significant resistance and were peacefully integrated into the political structure, though strictly kept subordinate to the Dlamini elite. Others, most notably the powerful Magagula clan under Chief Dvokolwako, posed a protracted resistance. Despite that Sobhuza broke their political autonomy, he preserved and incorporated their ideological power. By absorbing the spiritual authority of the conquered chiefs. He neutralised the resistance.

Neocolonialism

Eswatini gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1968. It had a multi-party system until 1973, when King Sobhuza II repealed the constitution and established an absolute monarchy. He formed a standing army to defend the royal family. Sobhuza died in 1982 and his son, Mswati III, has ruled since then.

Democracy Now

In 2019, the Communist Party of Swaziland began the Democracy Now campaign to end the monarchy. Non-communist parties such as the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress and People's United Democratic Movement are also involved in the struggle against Mswati. Since May 2022, the monarchy's forces have killed over 100 protestors.

Government

Eswatini holds elections to parliament every five years but political parties are not allowed to participate and the king can dissolve the parliament whenever he wants to.