Swaziland – Where the land encompasses
its people Written by Claire Kenny
Photographed by Claire Kenny, Marc Bush and Esther Hsu
I disentangle myself from the throngs clinging to the bar of
the uptown two trains and push onto the platform, joining the
moving current of people shoving their way up the stairs. We are
a scene from Zola’s Germinal, lap top bags hanging like
miners’ pickaxes from our shoulders. Out on the street,
I feel the human and commercial signs of the City morning—push
carts selling donuts and coffee, taxi exhaust, the damp cling
of the subways and sidewalks.
In New York City, the land is tucked among the people: potted
plants embellish Citigroup’s plaza, a “locatarian”
raises a handful of mint on a roof top in the Upper Westside.
Even our parks—Central, Morningside, Prospect—are
rigidly defined, hemmed in by avenues, stone walls, and cemeteries.
Man’s abolition of nature means that nature must now be
snuck into the corners of his life.
Twenty-five hours after I left New York City in April, I landed
in a twelve seat plane in the tiny sub-Saharan country of Swaziland
to begin work as a volunteer consultant with a US-funded non-governmental
organization (NGO). During my two months there, I came to understand
the natural wonders, as well as social hardships, contained in
this smallest-country in the Southern Hemisphere.
As my driver and I carve our way from the airport through the
royal heartland—the Ezulwini Valley—and into the Mdimba
Mountains surrounding the capital of Mbabane, I am overcome by
the sheer naturalness of the experience. It is clear that here
the land encompasses the people. On the right, mist clings to
the top of a foothill; up ahead, a vulture picks at a carcass
left on the road; in the on-coming lane, a goat chews at the sweet
grass rising from the meridian.
After two weeks in Swaziland, I’m still impressed by the
majesty of the scenery, but I’m also overcome by the brutality
of the environment. In the mornings, choking fog wrecks cars and
prevents airplanes from leaving for South Africa. A fierce hail
storm destroys cotton seedlings, wiping out hopes for agricultural
diversification. Massive beetles land on our playing fields and
six inch spiders creep along our duvet covers. In Swaziland, man
doesn’t have to reintroduce nature to his environment—instead,
man offers himself timidly and humbly to the creatures and forces
that determine the success of his business and the comfort of
his home.
While the natural environment is both beautiful and brutal, the
social environment has a similarly dual-faced personality. According
to the Lonely Planet guidebook, “easy going and laid-back
Swazis are more likely to celebrate for fun than demonstrate for
reform.” In my experience, this is true - Swazis appear
totally devoid of anger or cynicism. For me, this is quite a culture
clash from life in New York City.
This easy going demeanor, however, belies the Kingdoms’
serious social, political, and economic hurdles. Walter, one of
the taxi drivers we regularly call, embodies these challenges.
At age thirty-two, he, like many male Swazis, has more than one
wife. Indeed, polygamy here is legal and revered: the current
King has fifteen wives (the youngest of who is a teenager); his
father, King Sobhuza II, had over seventy wives and two-hundred
children.
While Walter must shoulder the economic cost of multiple families,
he also faces it with an immune system wrecked by HIV/AIDS. He
is not alone with this burden—over 40% of Swazis (~500,000
people) are HIV positive. According to the Center for Disease
Control (CDC), Walter can expect to live to 39 years—a very
short future for this young man.
In addition to battling AIDS, a Swazi like Walter must also battle
a political and economic system that can make upward mobility
difficult. Swaziland’s economy is often-times described
as “kleptocratic,” where the privileged “elect”
tightly grasp power and resources. In this country, it is good
to be member of the royal tribe, the Dlamini, which controls parliament,
the ministries, banks, and most of the more profitable agricultural
firms and processing facilities. It is also good to be a white
Swazi or even a mixed-race Swazi. It is very unfortunate, economically
speaking, to be a member of the poor population: you are likely
to be living on less than a dollar a day, likely to work on a
small farm or be unemployed, and likely to have little access
to higher education.
Over dinner one night, a colleague (and a member of the Dlamini
tribe) described to me the tradition of “praise singing.”
Every time the King gives a speech or a talk or even enters a
room, a praise singer, shouting in siSwati, recites the history
of the country and the King’s many wonderful deeds. The
tradition is meant to exalt both ruler and ruled, but it is hard
to imagine it as anything more than self-adulation.
While King Mswati has managed to preserve his and his tribe’s
power in this last-remaining monarchy in Africa, he is not leaving
a heartening legacy for future praise singers to recount: how
will a praise singer describe the impact of AIDS and the government’s
rent seeking behavior, or King Mswati’s decision to throw
multi-million dollar birthday celebrations while his nation languishes
on less than $1 per day?
While we do not have praise singers in the US and are blessed
with both a democratic government and social mobility, not everything
in Swaziland is so different from New York: Western food and dress,
via South Africa, have infiltrated the customs. Dinner is as likely
to be Kentucky Fried Chicken in the shopping plaza as it is to
be native pap and stew. Children eye strangers suspiciously, while
adults think about job security and food prices.
To lure people to Swaziland, the guidebooks are quick to describe
the country’s famous festivals and rich cultural traditions,
but some of these same traditions—including the monarchic
government and polygamy— are contributing to its misfortune.
I am never one to suggest a societal hierarchy, but the severity
of the situation here leaves little room for cultural relativism:
indeed, I have come to believe that major social, political, and
economic reforms must transpire before the Swazis break free from
their dual tunnels of poverty and disease.
Claire Kenny is
a graduate student at Harvard and is pursuing a dual-degree
program in business and international policy. She sees traveling
not as "time off" from work and study but as "time
on" to engage with new ideas and perspectives.
