THE KINGDOM OF SWAZILAND

Last weekend, it was hard to think of anywhere in the world where the scenery could have been more beautiful or life felt more serene than in the mountain kingdom of Swaziland.

The sun was a burning red orb as it slid over the horizon behind purple-blooming jacaranda trees, while a gentle breeze rippled through lush sugar-cane fields on the king's estate.

We had just passed impala grazing in the bush and gangs of turkey scavenging for food beside the road. All around was the buzz of excitement as families headed into a music festival at Simunye Country Club.

Royal tradition: Swaziland's King Mswati III can choose a new wife at the annual Swazi Reed Dance

Children, their faces painted in Spiderman patterns and wearing feather-rimmed tiaras, laughed as they ran around the funfair. Students sat in circles, taking swigs from cans of beer.

Everywhere people were smartly dressed, smiling and friendly. It felt timeless, the mood one of gentle enjoyment. It was difficult to believe we were in a country on the edge of revolt against the last absolute monarch in Africa.

For such peaceful scenes are no longer the typical image of this tiny nation that was, for so many years, such an oasis of stability surrounded by civil war, unrest and apartheid that it styled itself 'the Switzerland of Africa'.

Instead the middle-aged monarch — famed around the world for his leopardskin loincloths, his 13 wives and traditional ceremonies at which thousands of bare-breasted teenage virgins vie for his attention — rules over a land in turmoil.

The British-educated King Mswati III seems increasingly like a throwback to a medieval monarch, a profligate potentate trying — and failing — to keep the modern world at bay like an African Canute.

He clings onto antiquated traditions that promote rampant promiscuity in a land ripped apart by Aids, where elderly princes take child brides under the cloak of culture, corruption is rife and fawning courtiers feud for favours as their country falls apart.

Traditional: The Swazi Reed Dance festival, pictured in 1990, hasn't changed

Swaziland has the world's highest HIV rates and lowest life expectancy. The economy is collapsing so fast even pensions have been stopped while poverty is so extreme people have resorted to eating cow dung.

Such is the King's arrogance and incompetence, his country is probably closer than any other in sub-Saharan Africa to the sort of uprising we have seen sweeping the north of the continent this year.

'We are in meltdown,' said Bheki Makhubu, editor of The Nation newspaper. 'It's a terrible pity. There is a huge disconnect between the King and his people. He is on another planet.'

Visiting the kingdom, it appears outwardly calm. The shops seem prosperous, the streets spotlessly tidy and there are none of the wretched townships that scar neighbouring states.

King Mswati III attends the opening of the annual Swazi International Trade Fair in Manzini, Swaziland

Swaziland is classified as a middle-income country. When I remarked to one activist that the nation was poor, he reprimanded me. 'We are not a poor country — just badly run,' he said. 'I have been to Togo and Ethiopia and seen really poor countries.'

But Swaziland is effectively bankrupt. Already, two-thirds of its people live beneath the poverty line and 40 per cent are unemployed.

Now state spending has been slashed, with street lights switched off, schools closed, benefits stopped, university places cut, courts in chaos, prisoners' food reduced and even the national football team facing withdrawal from the World Cup.

Incredibly, one in four of those people I passed on the Swazi streets is HIV positive. And these are the official levels — it may be even worse: tests carried out on pregnant women revealed infection rates of 41 per cent, while more than half of factory workers were found to have the virus.

As a result, nearly one-third of children are orphaned and life expectancy has crashed from 60 to just 33 — which, as one person pointed out, made me an old man there.

Everyone you talk to, whatever their age, has lost scores of friends and family to the scourge, and funerals, with their all-night vigils, are commonplace.

Such shocking statistics make the King's polygamy, promiscuity and profligacy seem lethally irresponsible. Little wonder one of the world's oldest monarchies is fighting for survival.

'Sometimes I wish I had a bomb and I would throw it at the King,' said one of the young organisers of protests against him.

'We can't go on living like this. It hurts so much to see the King wasting all our money while we have no work.'

King Mswati ascended the throne 25 years ago straight after leaving Sherborne, the Dorset public school. He was an unexpected choice to succeed his father, the revered Sobhuza II, who had reigned for nearly 83 years — the longest documented rule of any monarch in world history — and oversaw the country's independence from Britain in 1968.

At the time of Sobhuza's death he had 70 wives, 210 children and 1,000 grandchildren. Mswati's mother — rumoured to have been a palace maid who caught the eye of the late king — took advantage of a power vacuum to manouevre her son into power.

(From left) The King, the Queen, one of his wives and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace

It has not, however, been a similarly glorious reign to that of his father. 'We have created a monster, and it is too late to do anything about it,' said one royal relative.

Like his father, 43-year-old Mswati has enjoyed the female fruits of office, exemplified by the famous annual Reed Dance. Tens of thousands of Swazi virgins trek across the country to cut reeds for the Queen Mother's residence, then for two days they dance semi-naked in front of the King, in the hope of catching his eye.

Ten years ago, as the Aids epidemic took off, Mswati invoked an ancient chastity rule and ordered subjects to refrain from sex for five years. But typically, he broke his own edict by choosing a 17-year-old girl for his ninth wife, paying a fine of one cow.

Two years later, a pretty 18-year-old caught his attention and he sent aides to fetch her from school. But in a rare challenge to his authority, he was sued by the girl's mother. Eventually, she was persuaded to drop her case and the girl became wife number ten.

Another girl from a wealthy family fled the country to escape his clutches. And his 12th wife, a former Miss Teen Swazi, claimed she was under house arrest after being caught having an affair with one of the King's best friends, a scandal that captivated the country.

Many girls see a fling with the King as a route out of poverty, but women's groups are fighting back against a culture that promotes promiscuity and female oppression.

One royal prince, however, argued against a landmark bill to outlaw stalking, on the grounds that it was part of Swazi male tradition.

Swazis are brought up to regard their king as a benevolent, god-like figure.

'Our inheritance is our pride and each Swazi has an obligation to sanctify our royalty,' Sibusiso Shongwe, a loyalist lawyer, told primary school children at their recent speech day.

Royal couple: King Mswati III of Swaziland and one of his wives, Inkhosikati Lahoala attends the wedding ceremony of Lesotho King Letsie III and his new wife Karabo Motsoeneng in 1996

'We are one of the few countries in the world where God still has a say in who rules us.'

But rampant corruption, growing repression and a spendthrift royal family in one of the world's most unequal societies is changing such attitudes. Although a state of emergency has been imposed since 1973, with political parties banned, there have been more than 30 protests this year, many of which have ended in violence and tear gas.

While most of the 1.2 million Swazis struggle to survive, the royal family flaunt their wealth with fleets of flash cars and flights on private jets for shopping trips in the Gulf.

'I heard his eldest daughter went to Abu Dhabi and spent $1 million in one weekend,' said one jobless accountant who joined some of the protests. 'Think how many unemployed people that could have helped.' Sobhuza, who used to wear an old blanket and ferry his family around on a bus, was renowned both for frugality and sensitivity to his subjects' needs.

But his son has ignored calls to cut his own spending, increasing the civil list by 24 per cent while ministries had budgets slashed. Mswati then imperiously told civil servants marching against wage freezes to 'work harder and sacrifice even more'.

There was particular anger over Mswati's decision to attend Britain's Royal Wedding earlier this year, flying to London with a 50-strong party just days after police in his country had used batons and water cannons to quash an attempted uprising along the lines of the Arab Spring.

Now Swaziland's collapse is so severe that the government is scrabbling around for funds to ensure it can pay its civil servants next month. Failure to do so would not only worsen the economic crisis — each worker has ten dependants on average — but almost certainly spark worse unrest.

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The cash crisis was caused by big cuts in revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (a 100-year-old trading agreement between five nations, including South Africa) on which Swaziland relied for two-thirds of its budget, while food crops have been declining over the past decade.

South Africa has offered to bail out the country, but the loan comes attached with demands to introduce democracy. If he can't find any other sources of income, the King's only alternative may be to dip into his £125 million personal fortune; he is, after all one of the world's 15 richest monarchs.