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MBABANE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th January, 2023) Russia and Eswatini have agreed to increase security cooperation, and Moscow is ready to consider Eswatini's applications on any issues that need to be resolved to ensure the security of the state, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. "We agreed today at a meeting with the military leadership to increase cooperation in the field of security. We have existing intergovernmental agreements on military cooperation, military-technical cooperation, a working group on military-technical cooperation," Lavrov said during a joint press conference with Eswatini Foreign Minister Thuli Dladla. The minister added that...

Gazi Simelane (Dusty) and Linda Msibi (Stones) are country music singers from the Kingdom of eSwatini. The 22-year-old band of two boasts of being the only African band to participate in the Texas Sounds International Country Music Awards, clinching the Duo of the Year Award 2017. Photo: Supplied On 17 November, Dusty and Stones, a feature-length documentary by filmmaker Jesse Rudoy, had its world premiere at New York’s NYC DOC festival, the United States’ largest and most influential documentary festival. Gazi Simelane (Dusty) and Linda Msibi (Stones) are country music singers from the Kingdom of eSwatini. The 22-year-old band of...

The U.S. government will spend more than half a million dollars to provide residents of a tiny, poverty-stricken African nation with condoms. The money, $700,000, will help fund a National Condom Strategy launched by the Ministry of Health in Eswatini, a landlocked south African country smaller than New Jersey. Until recently Eswatini was known as Swaziland but its tyrannical ruler, King Mswati III, changed it so the country could break with its colonial past. Estwatini is Africa’s only absolute monarchy and most of its population of about 1.4 million lives in poverty with the world’s highest rate of AIDS and...

DOWA, Malawi - In February, when the food ran out, Ezlina Chambukira started selling her precious possessions one by one. First, her goat. Then an old umbrella. Then two metal plates and a battered pail. When she had nothing left, she started praying for a miracle. For the first time in a decade, severe hunger is sweeping across southern Africa. The United Nations says that two years of erratic weather - alternating droughts and floods - coupled with mismanagement of food supplies have left seven million people in six countries at risk of starvation. Here in this dusty village of...

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KFVS) - A newborn baby was thrown into a pit by her mother, set on fire and left for dead. That was the first hours of life for the child known as Baby Shirley, born in Swaziland, Africa. Against all odds she survived and found her way to a mission based in Cape Girardeau, and a couple who brought her to the states for life saving surgery. That's only part of this baby's incredible story. For Raelenna and Jeremy Ferguson and their family, this moment was nothing short of a miracle. The sweetest ending to one of...

Swaziland's King Mswati III has finally married the 19-year-old former beauty pageant contestant dubbed by foreign media as 'Naughty Sindi'The King, aged 46, chose the teenager as his wife from among thousands of young virgin girls who danced semi-naked in front of him at the kingdom's annual Umhlanga or Reed Dance in 2013. The Observer on Sunday (31 August 2014), a newspaper in effect owned by the King, reported that Sindiswa Dlamini had been seen in public at the opening of a trade fair and this indicated that she was now officially the King's wife. It had been announced in...

The wedding only takes place once the fiancee falls pregnant. Dlamini will then become Mswati's 14th wife... Three wives left the household in recent years. The latest, Queen LaGija, fled the palace in 2012 claiming years of physical and emotional abuse. Another queen, LaDube, was reportedly abused after she was caught in bed with the justice minister, a close friend of the king. Mswati had kidnapped and married the queen when she was 16 in 2005.

A Swazi Member of Parliament has urged the government to hike taxes on traditional healers and soothsayers to help solve a funding crisis in Africa's last absolute monarchy. ... Swaziland's budget deficit ballooned to 15 percent of its annual economic output in 2010 but the government managed to keep itself afloat by running through central bank reserves and delaying payment of wages to civil servants. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined to launch a bailout because of reluctance by King Mswati III, who has at least a dozen wives and a personal fortune estimated at $200 million, to cut royal...

Swazi King Accuses 12th Wife of Adultery November 26, 2011 CNN's Nadia Bilchik talks about the King of Swaziland, who recently evicted his 12th wife from the palace for adultery.

Forces loyal to Swaziland’s King Mswati III on Tuesday used water cannons and fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at pro-democracy demonstrators to break up a protest against sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.... Protesters have demanded the abdication of King Mswati lll, whose 14 wives and lavish lifestyle have drawn criticism in a country where an estimated 60 percent of its 1.2 million people live on less than $2 per day. The 43-year-old king has several palaces and a fleet of luxury cars, and his wives are accused of taking frequent shopping trips to Europe. Swaziland has the world’s...

The polygamous king of Swaziland has fired his justice minister after the politician was caught red-handed having an affair with one of the king’s 14 wives. King Mswati III acted after pictures emerged of his minister Ndumiso Mamba hiding in the base of his adulterous wife’s bed. The astonishing images show security officials standing around the upturned bed looking down at the forlorn minister. Rumours that King Mswati III's twelfth wife, 22-year-old Nothando Dube – a former Miss Teen Swaziland – had been having an affair have circulated inside the country for weeks. While local media are banned from reporting...

An 11-year-old albino girl from Swaziland was shot dead in front of her friends and then beheaded in what police believe was a ritual murder.The child had been washing clothes and bathing at a river with friends and was returning home when she was grabbed by a man wearing a balaclava. As her friends looked on, the man shot her in the back before dragging her away. Her headless body was found upriver a short time later. The murder is the latest in a series of albino killings in Sub-Saharan Africa, where sufferers of the rare skin pigmentation condition...

N.Korea Demands Free World Cup Training in Swaziland The North Korean national soccer team asked for some W280 million from Swaziland to set up a training camp for its World Cup football team there but has been turned down. The 2010 World Cup is held in neighbouring South Africa. The Swazi Observer on March 17 said Swazi Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs Hlobsile Ndlovu decided to decline a request from one of the World Cup finalists that wanted to train there for eight days in late April and early May. Ndlovu did not specify what country, but the...

King Mswati III of Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarch and ruler of some of the poorest people in the world, has sent his favourite wives on a multimillion-pound shopping jaunt through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, provoking fierce criticism of his profligacy. Britain has been drawn into the row because of the millions of pounds in aid reportedly given to the kingdom, with campaigners accusing Whitehall of double standards. “They shout about Zimbabwe, but keep quiet about what is happening in Swaziland, even though they are one of its biggest aid donors. They are wasting British taxpayers’ money on...

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Russian dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for allegedly supplying weapons to Africa's bloody conflicts over power and diamonds was arrested Thursday in Thailand on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle guns to Colombia's leftist rebels. Viktor Bout, 41, whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, was arrested at U.S. request in his hotel room in Bangkok, said police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan. Bout had eluded arrest for years and was finally seized after a four-month sting organized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In New York, federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint...

LUDZIDZINI, Swaziland — Once upon a time, a young and handsome king ruled over a land of mountainous splendor near the southern tip of Africa. He liked to get married, and as the years passed he took 13 wives, each of them a great beauty. His countrymen wanted His Majesty to be happy, but some also thought so many spouses were an extravagance for a poor, tiny nation. After all, the king, Mswati III, often provided these wives a retinue, a palace and a new BMW. A great event was soon forthcoming — on Saturday, in fact. To prepare for...

Phindile Nkambule, 17, was revealed to the public when she took part in a traditional Reed Dance ceremony, in which girls perform before the king. The announcement comes just weeks after Mswati III ended an official ban on sex for women under 18. The ban was aimed at curbing the spread of HIV/Aids. According to custom, King Mswati, 37, will marry Phindile Nkambule once she becomes pregnant. She is reported to have caught the king's eye during the main annual Reed Dance in late August, when tens of thousands of bare-breasted girls took part in a traditional rite of Spring.

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...

EZULWINI VALLEY, Swaziland (Reuters) -- The king of Swaziland's daughter was whipped by a palace official at a party of teenage virgins ahead of a festival where more than 50,000 maidens are available to become her father's 13th wife, media said on Sunday. Princess Sikhanyiso, 17, told the Times of Swaziland a palace official whipped girls, including beauty queen Miss Swaziland, at the party as a punishment after they refused to turn down the music. She was pictured showing her bruises. Thousands of bare-breasted virgins will dance for Africa's last absolute monarch in Monday's Reed Dance ceremony, which King Mswati...

Swaziland's King Mswati III, who imposed a five-year sex ban on the kingdom's teenage girls, has dropped it a year early. The girls have had to wear large woolen tassels as a sign of their chastity since 2001. The sex ban was imposed to fight the spread of HIV/Aids. Swaziland has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, at almost 40 percent of the population. The king meanwhile fined himself a cow for breaking the ban by marrying again, a 17-year-old who became his ninth wife. (UPI)