This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
THIS work is a general introduction to Swaziland since its founding as the Swazi nation. Its boundaries during precolonial times extended far beyond the borders of the modern state of Swaziland and included large portions of modern South Africa. The book provides some details about the land, the history and the people of Swaziland today and how they live. It also focuses on Swaziland during the early years of independence and her place in the context of southern Africa and of Africa as a whole then and now. It may help stimulate interest in some people to learn more about the country and may be enough to satisfy the curiosity of others who only want to learn some basic facts about this nation.
Swaziland—recently renamed Eswatini—is the only nation-state in Africa with a functioning indigenous political system. Elsewhere on the continent, most departing colonial administrators were succeeded by Western-educated elites. In Swaziland, traditional Swazi leaders managed to establish an absolute monarchy instead, qualified by the author as benevolent and people-centred, a system which they have successfully defended from competing political forces since the 1970s. This book is the first to study the constitutional history of this monarchy. It examines its origins in the colonial era, the financial support it received from white settlers and apartheid South Africa, and the challenges it faced from political parties and the judiciary, before King Sobhuza II finally consolidated power in 1978 with an auto-coup d’état. As Hlengiwe Dlamini shows, the history of constitution-making in Swaziland is rich, complex, and full of overlooked insight for historians of Africa.
KEY ISSUES Setting: Swaziland has gradually recovered from the fiscal crisis of 2010-11, buoyed by the improved revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Growth modestly recovered, and international reserves rebounded. Swaziland’s challenges, however, remain significant, in view of its high vulnerability to exogenous shocks and its sluggish growth performance, while facing significant social and development challenges with high unemployment and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Swaziland now stands at a critical juncture to strengthen its resilience to exogenous shocks, address its weak growth performance, and meet critical social and development needs. Outlook and risks: Under the status-quo policies, the outlook is for continued sluggish growth and increasing fiscal and external imbalances, reflecting low private investment, elevated government spending, and prospective decline in SACU revenues. Risks are associated with the high volatility of the SACU revenues, possible negative spillovers from South Africa (including higher policy rate and lower growth), and uncertain prospects for preferential trade agreements with the U.S. and EU. Strengthening Resilience to Shocks: Over the medium term, international reserves should be targeted at five to seven months of imports, and public debt be kept below 30 percent of GDP. This calls for a prudent fiscal policy stance, with fiscal deficit below 2 percent of GDP. Raising growth: It is essential to enhance the efficiency of the public sector and promote private sector-led growth through structural reforms including improving business climate and accelerating land reforms. Maintaining financial stability: Financial soundness indicators are generally strong. The strong growth of the nonbank financial sector in recent years calls for strengthening of supervision and regulation for the sector. Past advice: There is broad agreement between the Fund and the authorities on macroeconomic policy and structural reform priorities. With the authorities’ fiscal consolidation efforts and the improved SACU revenues, fiscal and external sustainability is being restored, consistent with staff’s advice. However, progress on structural reforms—including re-launching the privatization process, improving access to modern finance and improving the business climate—has been modest.
The author of this work, Owen Rowe O'Neil, was a South African Boer (farmer) of Irish descent who grew up near the border between Swaziland and the Transvaal. As a child and an adult he made frequent trips to Swaziland. O'Neil's book describes warfare, customs, political organization, and medicine in late-19th and early-20th century Swaziland, as well as recounts O'Neil's numerous personal encounters with King Buno, his mother, Queen Labotsibeni, Crown Prince Sebuza, and other members of the royal family. Swaziland came under the control of the South African Boer Republic in 1894. It became a British protectorate in 1902, after the British victory in the Boer War. Swaziland achieved full independence on September 6, 1968.
This book describes the basis of Swazi traditional life and examines how modern values are influencing change. It focuses on Hilda Kuper's original study and subsequent analyses to describe that traditional society.
