Africa’s last absolute monarchy rebranded its English name
Eswatini is a landlocked Southern African kingdom wrapped by South Africa except where Mozambique touches the east. Swazi kings built the realm in the mid-eighteenth century under Ngwane III; the nation and people take their labels from nineteenth-century monarch Mswati II.
Formerly Swaziland and historically KaNgwane, the kingdom measures no more than 200 kilometres north to south and 130 east to west, making it continental Africa's second-smallest country. Even so it ranges from cool mountainous highveld to hot, dry lowveld. Mbabane is the executive capital and largest city, and Lobamba the legislative capital. Most people are ethnic Swazis and speak siSwati. The borders were drawn in 1881 during the Scramble for Africa.
Stone tools show people here around 200,000 years ago, and rock paintings range from about 27,000 years old to the nineteenth century. Khoisan hunter-gatherers were largely displaced by Nguni peoples in the Bantu migrations from the Great Lakes. Farming and ironworking appear by the fourth century, and ancestors of today's Sotho and Nguni speakers settled by the eleventh. The Swazi made their home between the Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean, bringing cattle, seed and crafts in iron, wood, hide and clay.
After the Second Boer War, Britain ran Swaziland as a high commission territory from 1903 until independence on 6 September 1968. Half a century later, in 2018, the monarch adopted the siSwati form Eswatini as the official name. Mswati III has reigned since 1986 over Africa's last absolute monarchy; parliamentary elections are held every five years but parties may not stand, and the constitution dates from 2005.
The lower-middle income economy relies on farming and manufacturing for jobs. South Africa is the main trading partner, and the lilangeni is pegged to the rand. HIV affects 28 percent of adults, and as of 2018 life expectancy of 58 years was the twelfth-lowest in the world, with a median age of 22.
Source: Eswatini
