Swazi monarch orders subjects to 'stop eating foreign donor food'

[Hail Columbia]

http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=21385&

Mbabane - Swaziland's King Mswati III, who is one of the world's few remaining absolute monarchs, has issued a praise-worthy decree: he orders his 900,000 subjects to wean themselves off foreign food aid. At least 450,000 Swazi subjects now live on UN-donated food-aid - mostly AIDS-orphans.

The landlocked country 's monarch however, overjoyed about its best rainfall in years this past week, said that the time has arrived for Swazis to get out of their dependancy syndrome and start cultivating and eating their own food...'

In a speech to army cadets on Thursday -- who had been helping cultivate farmland owned by the Royal Family -- Mswati said recent downpours after a five-year-drought should encourage farmers to attend to their fields.

'WE MUST GET OUT OF OUR DEPENDANCY SYNDROME...' he said...

"The time has come for us to come out of the dependency syndrome and start eating our own food that we have cultivated in our fields instead of depending on the donor community," Mswati said in comments carried by state media.

More than 450,000 Swazis currently live on food-aid after a series of poor harvests dating back five years.: thus more than half the population, including 450,000 AIDS-orphans, are now surviving on foreign donor-food.

The latest census in 2008 shows that there are only 912,229 Swazis living in the Kingdom right now -- the mountain-kingdom's population growth has dropped to well below zero, as there still were some 1,1-million Swazis in 2004.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Swazi government declared a national disaster in June last year after maize production more than halved.

The United Nations then issued a donor appeal for some $15-million from the international community 'to avert mass starvation.'

Swaziland, a landlocked kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique, is one of the poorest countries on the continent with around 70% of the less than 1-million residents living on less than a dollar a day.
However with only one majority tribe within its borders, Swaziland also os one of the most peaceful African countries.
Its citizens aren't nearly as poor as is being claimed by the UN -- they earn a lot of extra cash with "Swazi Gold": their traditional underground mule-train trade with their own, indigenously-grown high-grade marijuana.
The illegal drug is smuggled through a close-knitnetwork of Swazi tribesmen through northern KwaZulu-Natal and to Durban harbour for export to the rest of the world.

Chemically-unpolluted, the Swazi Gold is coveted worldwide for its mellowing effects, it is being claimed by lovers of the narcotic weed.