Swazi queen joins Aids battle
2004-11-29 09:03
Nkoyoyo Palace, Swaziland - Swazi Queen Sibonelo Mngomezulu takes on her kingdom's record-high Aids rates with as much passion as she fights to bring women out of men's shadows in Africa's last absolute monarchy.
Married to polygamist King Mswati III for nearly two decades, the so-called "Queen of Firsts" has broken the mould many times, completing a law degree, speaking out against polygamy, producing her own television show and setting up the first Aids charities.
"It was unheard of, in fact it was considered a bit outrageous," she said of her first charity work in 1992.
"But I was determined and everyone grew accustomed to it. It happens every time I do something new... it is initially scorned upon, and then people start to follow," she told AFP in an interview from her royal palace outside Mababane.
Also known by her clan name Inkhosikati LaMbikiza, or Queen LaMbikiza, she currently runs two Aids organisations, Lusito (siSwati for "help"), which pays for orphans to go to school and Tisite ("help yourself") that helps careworkers.
"I saw a lot of suffering among children and I just thought we should try and devise a strategy to help them," Mngomezulu said from the huge Nkoyoyo Palace towering over the mountain kingdom from a green hilltop.
The striking Mngomezulu, 35, is a picture of modernity as she sits beneath a life-size portrait of King Mswati in his traditional garb on a background of rolling mountains.
Dressed in a bright red chiffon dress with a plunging neckline and shiny red high heels, her red hair extensions an elegant stack on her head, her nails varnished, Mngomezulu concurs that women's status in Swaziland as second-class citizens may well be behind the kingdom's sky-high Aids rate.
"It can in a great deal be one of the reasons for our high Aids rate," she acknowledged, but added: "Those problems arise in the more traditional families.
"We've got a new draft constitution which gives equal rights to women. We had to do a lot of soliciting, we had made quite a lot of noise, it didn't come easy.
"So soon it will not be legal anymore to get a woman in a position of submission. It might still be practised but it will be up to the woman to make sure her rights are enforced."
Mngomezulu, who was chosen as a teenager as the first of Mswati's 11 wives, said she feels strongly about women taking some responsibility for their lives.
"When women are too timid to come out and say no, the man will do what he wants."
That view is shared by health workers in Swaziland, a mountainous kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique which is grappling with the world's highest Aids infection rate at 38.8 percent, according to the UN figures.
An estimated 20 000 people contract full-blown Aids every year and some 17 000 died of Aids in 2003.
About 65 000 children have been orphaned by Aids in the kingdom with a population of one million and that figure is set to nearly double by 2010.