Last Dance for the Playboy King of Swaziland?
As Swaziland's economy struggles, Africa's last absolute monarch faces a growing chorus of critics.
LOBAMBA, Swaziland—It's fast approaching dusk at the Ludzidzini Royal Compound when King Mswati III makes his long-awaited entrance.
For hours, the royal stadium has been a spectacle of song and dance, as thousands of young women and girls from across the Kingdom of Swaziland, dressed in beaded skirts and colorful sashes that expose their thighs and breasts, performed for the guests assembled.
It is the last Sunday in August, the penultimate day of Swaziland's week-long Umhlanga ceremony, or Reed Dance, an annual event in which girls from the age of five to their early twenties—known as maidens—gather at the Swazi royal residence in Lobamba in an expression of tradition, chastity, and independence.
Although the show begins long before Mswati's arrival,
