BAYETHE WENA WAPHAKATHI: A MONARCH REINVENTING HIMSELF POST 2021 UPRISING
This week has been symbolic. It’s Umhlanga week, yet also the King has been officially crowned ‘King of Kings’ by a group of African monarchs and traditional leaders.
When historians finally write the history of eSwatini under King Mswati III, they will note that the monarch reinvented himself and his kingship after the tumultuous 2021 uprising. What once appeared to be the twilight of absolute monarchy in Africa is now being reframed, with Mswati positioning himself as a custodian of an alternative African future.
Other African Kings and Queens are now seeking his leadership and guidance at a continental level. This week is a defining moment for royalty indeed. For example, at the Eswatini International Trade Fair in Manzini, throngs of people nearly caused a stampede when Mswati entered in the company of Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, and Botswana’s former President Ian Khama.
The atmosphere at the trade fair as the monarch toured the stands carried echoes of Beijing’s grand parade in a scaled down version, yes, but symbolically powerful. Here was a king towering above republican leaders, reclaiming political and cultural authority that many thought lost just four years ago. From fading monarchy to revived kingship In 2021, during Eswatini’s unprecedented pro-democracy protests, it seemed the monarchy was faltering.
King Mswati looks on as his Minister signs a document during his trip to Ghana.
The people’s anger was not only directed at political repression but also at the very institution of traditional leadership embedded in every layer of Swazi life. The King’s powers looked increasingly detached from modern realities, associated less with unity and continuity and more with corruption, patronage, and excess.
For a brief moment, liberal democracy, sweeping across much of Africa in the 1990s, seemed poised to bury the idea of hereditary rule. It felt more like Francis Fukuyama had African kings when he fanously pronounced the"The End of History" in 1992. Kingship was fading and traditional leadership giving way to liberal democracy and market capitalism.
Decades later King Mswati has deftly repackaged monarchy as a form of governance resistant to the pitfalls of party politics. He is framing, right before our eyes, kingship not as backwardness, but as resilience: a system immune to the tribal, ethnic, and factional divides that splinter republics across the continent.
King Mswati flanked by President Zuma ad Khama at the official opening of trade the trade fair.
The argument goes that where multiparty democracy has produced conflict, coups, and instability, the Swazi monarch presents continuity, cultural rootedness, and stability—even if it comes at the expense of popular participation.
In any event where multi party succeded in Africa because we all as poor and under developed across different governance systems, some reason. Exporting Swazi monarchy This reframing has not gone unnoticed beyond eSwatini’s borders. First it was South Africa’s third-largest party, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), borrowing liberally from King Mswati’s model.
Traditional African leaders at the conferenfe hosted in eSwatini
Under Zuma’s leadership, MKP operates almost as a palace party, run from Nkandla, embedding traditional leaders into its structure and elevating kingship as a political ideal. Even in KwaZulu-Natal’s fractious royal succession battles, Mswati has emerged as an authority consulted for guidance—his stature in regional traditional affairs arguably greater than that of many republican presidents. Then came the Ghana meeting with that country's kings. The monarch was on a move beyond the kingdom's borders.
This week, as thousands gathered for the Umhlanga (Reed Dance) ceremony, the country is hosting the Conference of All African Traditional Leaders, a pan-African gathering aimed at “restoring indigenous governance at a continental scale.”
The symbolism is deliberate: while maidens present reeds to their king in a display of continuity, monarchs, chiefs, and custodians of ancestral authority will sit together to debate Africa’s governance future. King Mswati’s maneuvers suggest that monarchy in Africa is far from dead.
In fact, it may be experiencing a quiet revival, ironically under the leadership of the King. Traditional governance is increasingly being sold as cultural authenticity in a continent where western liberal democracy is often seen as foreign, imposed, or dysfunctional.
For many Africans, kingship feels closer to home than the ballot box. Neoliberal capitalism and the marauding hand of market forces have destroyed everything—Africans have lost their history, identity, community, and traditions—so monarchs like ours are seen as a safe refuge, rightly or wrongly.
Some of the African traditional leaders reveiving gifts at the African traditional leaders conference held in eSwatini
What we are witnessing, then, is not simply the survival of Mswati’s monarchy, but its reinvention as a political export and continental experiment. For some, it is proof that Africa can resist western blueprints and revive its indigenous institutions.
For others, it is a dangerous entrenchment of undemocratic authority dressed in cultural finery. Either way, King Mswati has ensured that monarchy in Africa is not a fading relic. It remains an active, if contested, force shaping the continent’s future.