Free Republic

The accident happened on Friday night when their open truck smashed into a car on the road between the tiny kingdom's two main cities, Mbabane and Manzini, en route to the traditional Reed Dance. "A total of 38 young girls have been pronounced dead, with more than 20 others seriously injured," Swaziland Solidarity Network spokesman Lucky Lukhele said. ... "The girls were in an open truck which hit a sedan car stopped on the road," The Reed Dance, due to be held on Monday, is a beauty pageant that attracts tens of thousands of young virgins who dance before the...

THE king of Swaziland has picked a teenage student to be his 13th bride less than a month after more than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to catch his eye at the annual Reed Dance ceremony. King Mswati III, who is 37, presented 17-year-old Phindile Nkambule as his new wife-to-be at a traditional ceremony, where she appeared topless but donned the red feathers worn only by royalty for the first time. Women's groups and political opponents said King Mswati's penchant for multiple young brides ill befits a country with the world's highest rate of HIV/AIDS, but the monarch said polygamy is...