Eswatini
Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where it shares a border with Mozambique. At no more than north to south and east to west, Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa. However, its climate and topography are diverse, ranging from a cool and mountainous highveld to a hot and dry lowveld. The executive capital and largest city is Mbabane, and the legislative and second capital is Lobamba.
The population is composed primarily of ethnic Swazis. The prevalent language is Swazi. The Swazis established their kingdom in the mid-18th century under the leadership of Ngwane III. The country and the Swazi take their names from Mswati II, the 19th-century king under whose rule the country was expanded and unified. Its boundaries were drawn up in 1881 in the midst of the European Scramble for Africa.
After the Second Boer War, the kingdom, under the name of Swaziland, was a British high commission territory from 1903 until it regained its full independence on 6 September 1968. In April 2018, the king changed the official name from Kingdom of Swaziland to Kingdom of Eswatini, the name commonly used in the Swazi language.
Eswatini is a developing country that is classified as having a lower-middle income economy. As a member of the Southern African Customs Union and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, its main local trading partner is South Africa; to ensure economic stability, Eswatini's currency, the lilangeni, is pegged to the South African rand. Eswatini's major overseas trading partners are the United States and the European Union. The majority of the country's employment is provided by its agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Eswatini is a member of the Southern African Development Community, the African Union, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations.
Eswatini's government is an absolute monarchy, the last of its kind in Africa. The country has been ruled by King Mswati III since 1986. Elections are held every five years to determine the House of Assembly and the Senate majority, but political parties are prohibited from running. Eswatini's constitution was adopted in 2005.
The Swazi population faces major health issues: HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are widespread. Twenty-eight percent of the adult population are HIV-positive. As of 2018, Eswatini has the 12th-lowest life expectancy in the world, at 58 years. Also as of 2018, people aged 14 years or younger constitute 35% of the country's population; the median age is 22 years.
History
Artifacts have been found indicating human activity dating back to the Early Stone Age, around 200,000 years ago. Prehistoric rock art paintings dating from as far back as to as recently as the 19th century can be found around the country.The earliest known inhabitants of the region were Khoisan hunter-gatherers. They were largely replaced by the Nguni during the great Bantu migrations. These peoples originated from the Great Lakes region of eastern and central Africa. Evidence of agriculture and iron use dates from about the 4th century. People speaking languages ancestral to the current Sotho and Nguni languages began settling no later than the 11th century. Historically, the Bantu-speaking people of the southern part of Africa came from the Katanga direction and continued to expand to the south along the east coast of Africa. The Swazi people settled in the area between the Drakensberg Mountains and the Indian Ocean, and like other Bantu-speaking communities, they brought with them cattle, seeds to cultivate and handmade iron, wood, animal skin and clay products.
The Swazi trace their origins to the Embo-Dlamini, a branch of the Embo-Nguni that originally settled in Tembeland, near present-day Delagoa Bay in Mozambique during the Bantu expansion. Within the Tembe territories, the Embo people were a small chiefdom led by Chief Langa.
Most Nguni-speaking communities, including the Embo, were identified by their cattle-based economy, crop farming and strategic settlement near water sources.
Nineteenth-century British colonial records also linked the Tembe and Swazi chieftaincies. One document noted: “We observe that the words Kings are intended to signify the Kings of Swazi and Tembe.”
Portuguese in 1589 recorded meeting a group of people in the Limpopo River region who called themselves "Vhambedzi" or "BaMbo". Historian J. S. M. Matsebula states that this were earlier forms of the present day Swazi people who were identified by their use of reeds in the Zambezi River, which, he writes, it "infers that the Swazi people arrived in southern Africa through the use of reeds to cross the Zambezi River". This is also evidenced in their praise names: ..tsine lesavela eluhlangeni and nine beluhlanga referring to the Dlamini clan. The Vhambedzi or Vhambo were the Embo during their gradual movement southward to the Maputaland-Lubombo region.
In the Crocodile River region, the Nguni separated into Ntungwa-Nguni and Embo-Nguni, the later which evolved into Embo-Dlamini, the earliest form of the current Swazi people. The Embo-Nguni continued with their movement southward until they reached Delagoa Bay between the Lubombo Mountains and Indian Ocean, becoming one of the small chiefdoms under the Nyaka east of the Maputo River and the Tembe west of the river.
Swazi settlers (18th and 19th centuries)
The Swazi, before they moved and settled in the Pongola River in attempting to be independent, had for many years been settled in the Tembe River and submitted to Tembe chiefs who had influence across the Lubombo Mountains and southwards to the Lusutfu River. Dlamini III was a king or iNgwenyama of the Swazi people and he led them approximately between 1720 until 1744 and worked closely with his adviser Chief Mbokane. King Dlamini III was the father to Ngwane III, the first King of modern Swaziland and after whom the country was named KaNgwane and his people becoming known as BakaNgwane. Continuing conflict with the Ndwandwe people pushed them further north, with Ngwane III establishing his capital at Shiselweni at the foot of the Mhlosheni hills. Under Sobhuza I, the Ngwane people established their capital at Zombodze in the heartland of present-day Eswatini. In this process, they conquered and incorporated the long established clans of the country known to the Swazi as Emakhandzambili.The names "Swaziland" and "Eswatini" both derive from a later king named Mswati II. KaNgwane, named for Ngwane III, is an alternative name for Eswatini, the surname of whose royal house remains Nkhosi Dlamini. Mswati II was the greatest of the fighting kings of Swaziland, and he greatly extended the area of the country to twice its current size. The Emakhandzambili clans were initially incorporated into the kingdom with wide autonomy, often including grants of special ritual and political status. The extent of their autonomy, however, was drastically curtailed by Mswati, who attacked and subdued some of them in the 1850s. With his power, Mswati greatly reduced the influence of the Emakhandzambili while incorporating more people into his kingdom either through conquest or by giving them refuge. These later arrivals became known to the Swazis as Emafikamuva.
The autonomy of the Swazi nation was influenced by British and Dutch rule of southern Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1881, the British government signed a convention recognising Swazi independence, despite the Scramble for Africa that was taking place at the time. This independence was also recognised in the London Convention of 1884.
King Mbandzeni created a complex pattern of land ownership by granting many concessions to Europeans. During the concessions some of the King's senior chiefs like Chief Ntengu Mbokane got permission to relocate to farms towards the Lubombo region, in the modern-day city of Nsoko. Others like Mshiza Maseko relocated to farms towards the Komati River in the place called eLuvalweni. The concessions included grants and leases for agriculture and grazing. In 1890, following the death of Mbandzeni, a Swaziland Convention created a Chief Court to determine disputes about controversial land and mineral rights and other concessions.
Swaziland was given a triumviral administration in 1890, representing the British, the Dutch republics, and the Swazi people. In 1894, a convention placed Swaziland under the South African Republic as a protectorate. This continued under the rule of Ngwane V until the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899.
King Ngwane V died in December 1899, during incwala, after the outbreak of the Second Boer War. His successor, Sobhuza II, was four months old. Swaziland was indirectly involved in the war with various skirmishes between the British and the Boers occurring in the country until 1902.
British indirect rule over Swaziland (1906–1968)
In 1903, after the British victory in the Second Boer War, Swaziland became one of the British "High Commission Territories", the others being Basutoland and Bechuanaland, although a protectorate was not established because terms had not been agreed with the Swazi Queen Regent Labotsibeni Mdluli.The Swaziland Administration Proclamation of 1904 established a commission with the task of examining all the concessions and defining their boundaries. This work was finished by 1907, and the Swaziland Concessions Partition Proclamation provided for a concessions partition commissioner to be appointed to set aside areas for the sole use and occupation of the Swazis. The commissioner had the power to expropriate up to one third of each concession without compensation, but payment would need to be made if more than a third was taken. In the event, in 1910 he completed his work and set aside 1,639,687 acres, some 38% of Swaziland's area, for the Swazi. The queen regent then encouraged the Swazi to go to work in the Transvaal to earn money to buy more land from the Europeans.
Much of the early administration of the territory was carried out from South Africa until 1906, when the Transvaal Colony was granted self-government. A British high commissioner had some of the functions of a governor, but the Swazis were self-governing on their reserves, and the territory was not deemed to be a British possession. Sobhuza's official coronation as king was in December 1921 after the regency of Labotsibeni, after which he led an unsuccessful deputation to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in London in 1922 regarding the issue of the land.
In the period between 1923 and 1963, Sobhuza II established the Swazi Commercial Amadoda which was to grant licences to small businesses on the Swazi reserves and also established the Swazi National School to counter the dominance of the missions in education. His stature grew with time, and the Swazi royal leadership was successful in resisting the weakening power of the British administration and the possibility of the incorporation of Swaziland into the Union of South Africa.
The constitution for independent Swaziland was promulgated by Britain in November 1963 under the terms of which a Legislative Council and an Executive Council were established. This development was opposed by the king's Swazi National Council. Despite such opposition, elections took place, and the first Legislative Council was constituted on 9 September 1964. By 1964, the area of the country reserved for occupation by the Swazi had increased to 56%. Changes to the original constitution proposed by the Legislative Council were accepted by Britain and a new constitution providing for a House of Assembly and Senate was drawn up. Elections under this constitution were held in 1967. Following the 1967 elections, Swaziland was a protected state until independence was regained in 1968.