Africa’s last monarch King Mswati III of Swaziland reportedly has cancelled plans for a “silver jubilee” (estimated to be 1.2 million euros) amid warning from the IMF that the landlocked kingdom is teetering on financial collapse. Well, the truth is that King Mswati needs to cancel many things, including:
• He should unban political parties, which his late father King Sobhuza II banned in 1973 in the name of unity. Currently Mswati has absolute power, and appoints the prime minister and cabinet, all judges, two-thirds of the upper house, 15 per cent of the lower house, and is commander in chief of the armed forces.
• He should stop using the annual ‘Umhlanga” or reed dance (in which thousands of chanting bare-breasted-maidens are paraded before him) as a platform to pick an additional wife.
• He should put a stop to the royal family’s affluent and lavish life style, which is in a stark contrast with the reality that the country is faced with the challenges poverty, hunger, unemployment, drought, HIV-Aids epidemic, and tuberculosis.
A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. While it appears likely that the war will carry on into the foreseeable future, enough time has passed for us to make an honest assessment of each side’s relative […]
The Ukrainian Army has made dramatic strides in the last few weeks. Ukraine’s tactical commanders have outfoxed their Russian counterparts, and by issuing a feint towards the south the UA has been able to earn substantial gains in the north of their country. The impact of these efforts have been compounded by the steady stream […]
In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message […]
The first wave of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has fallen short of Russian autocrat Vladmir Putin’s ambitions. Most analysts deduced that Putin had hoped to achieve a decapitation strike of the Ukrainian government- taking Kiev and replacing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinski with a pro-Kremlin voice. Kiev has been threatened repeatedly through the course of […]
On the weekend of March 26th, the notorious MS-13 gang went on a massive killing spree in El Salvador which left more than 70 people dead by Sunday. Even for a country where powerful gangs hold massive sway, this recent tragedy stands out considering that it was the bloodiest day on record since the civil […]
