Monarchy
According to current Swazi law and custom, the monarch holds supreme executive, legislative, and judicial powers. History is short, however, and in Swaziland's case is punctuated with a 65 year reign (including a 23 year regency) of Sobhuza II of Swaziland. The Ngwenyama (King, lion, representing the hardness as expressed in thunder) is a hereditary leader, rules the country, with the assistance of a council of ministers and a national legislature. The Ndlovukati (Senior Queen, preferentially the mother of the king, she-elephant, representing softness as in water) is in charge of national rituals, and acts as regent if her counterpart Ngwenyama dies and the heir has not performed royal adulthood rituals or is indisposed. If the king's mother is no longer living, one of the king's wives may act as Ndlovukati. In Sobhuza II's case, his grandmother theNdlovukati Labotsibeni Mdluli was regent from his choice as infant heir in 1899 following the death of his father Bhunu until his accession to full authority in 1922, when his mother Lomawa Ndwandwe became the ndlovukati. Later in his long reign three other women became senior queen, when an ndlovukati" died, another was appointed from among his senior wives.
The king and the senior queen rule together in theory, and did so in practice up until the reign of Sobhuza II, making the term "monarchy" somewhat misleading historically. Before colonization the senior queen acted as a check and counterweight to the king's power, both through her direct control of some military forces and her control of rainmaking medicines and rites and of key aspects of the Ncwala national ritual that annually binds the fate of the king and the nation together. British policy and the strength of Sobhuza II's personality shifted power decisively toward the king and away from the senior queen during his long reign.
During a period of intense succession struggles following the death of Sobhuza II, the Ndlovukati was assisted by Prince Sozisa Dlamini, the holder of a novel office, the Authorised Person, in-Libandla, and then was deposed and the mother of the heir, now King Mswati III was made ndlovukati prior to his full accession. Subsequently the constitution was revised to provide that where the Regent and the Authorised Person are not in agreement on any matter, the matter shall be referred to Bantfwabenkhosi (princes) and chiefs.
The King, according to the new constitution, is also Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces. He and in-Libandla have legal immunity.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Swaziland
Famous quotes containing the word monarchy:
“A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)