Jadakiss and the King
Hip hop is usually associated with revolution and counter culture. But American artists, who visit the content, usually side with power. Like Jadakiss did in Swaziland
Jadakiss performing earlier this month in New York City (Dephisticate, via Flickr Creative Commons).
Who advised rapper Jadakiss to take a trip to Swaziland trip to perform at a “fundraiser” for Swaziland’s royal family? The trip is recounted in this promotional video shot by his team. Watch from the 5th minute.
As we know, the Swazi royal family really need a fundraiser. This is the same royal family whose king, Mswati III, paid for a US$6.3 million shopping trip for his wives to Asia in 2009; Swaziland is also a country where about two-thirds of the people live in abject poverty, and more than a quarter of the adult population has AIDS. Oh, and the money from the national treasury for the upkeep of the king’s family is equal to the education budget. I know the Swazi people weren’t happy about this. They didn’t show up. In fact, the Swazi Youth Congress, which has been prominent in the resisting absolute monarchy, asked Jadakiss to not do the show. Of course, Jadakiss did.
I am copying below an excerpt of what I wrote in September 2008 on a previous iteration of this site about Mswati III’s rule that mostly still holds.
At least 43 % of Swazis are HIV positive and almost two-thirds survive on foreign food aid. Women’s rights are non-existent. So are political rights. Political parties have been banned since 1973. The Constitution was suspended that same year and King Sobhuza II (Mswati’s father became an absolute monarch). Recent constitutional reforms are a sham. Opposition politicians are assassinated (in March 2008, Gabriel Mukhame, a PUDEMO leader, was murdered in neighboring South Africa; fingers point to security forces). Trade union activity is heavily policed and protest outlawed.
Meanwhile, the King pampers his 13 wives with shopping trips (last trip they went to Dubai), bought a private jet and owns half the country. As the recent film, Without the King, shows Mswati III and his advisers (and heirs) are out of touch with the reality of his subjects. But his people are restless. Despite harassment, 10,000 people turned up for a march on Friday and the country’s women’s movement turned up to protest the princesses’ shopping spree. The King’s traditional prime minister shot back that that “protest was against the Swazi culture and an act by disrespectful women who have taken the fight for women a bit to far.”
The region’s governments won’t do much about events in Swaziland (the powerful South African government feels it owes King Sobhuza III’s “legacy;” he sheltered the ANC during its long exile and allowed its operatives to pass through there on the way to South Africa from Mozambique or Zimbabwe). Neither will Western governments or their media raise a stink (except maybe this weekend; but then write about it in a “humorous” way).
Like his father, Sobhuza II, Mswati III is good at playing the exotic card: Western media crews go to Swaziland for two things: the annual reed dance and to interview the King about his “strange customs” when it comes to accumulating wives.
The brave people of Swaziland it seems will eventually have to save themselves.
