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Mswati III's budget, which is not debated by parliament, includes provisions for mother's upkeep and construction work on palaces Continue reading... ...

Singer lashes out after human rights advocates accuse her of supporting 'brutal dictator' after Swaziland appearance Human rights activists have accused Erykah Badu of "endorsing a brutal dictator" by performing at the 46th birthday celebration of Swaziland's King Mswati III. The singer has refused to apologise for appearing at the show, insisting that, although she doesn't "keep up...

Striker lost boots while being chased to team's bus Mbabane Highlanders fans enraged by 5-1 thrashing The Mbabane Highlanders striker Mfanufikile Ndzimandze has urged angry fans to return the boots he lost after Swaziland's most successful club slumped to their worst defeat in 22 years on Sunday. Ndzimandze lost the boots while being chased by enraged supporters to the club's mini-bus after the 5-1...

When it comes to school dinners, pizza is a vegetable, according to the US government Where America goes , Britain so often follows blindly at their heels. But Cribsheet is determined to shed light into the murky gloom of one particular path before any school dinner providers are tempted to follow it. Pizza is not a vegetable, and - despite all of its salty, greasy, fatty yumminess - it does not contain...

IMF says southern African kingdom is struggling to pay grants to children and the elderly, while monarch resists bailout Swaziland has failed to pay more than $10m (£6.3m) in grants to Aids orphans, the IMF says, despite the vast wealth enjoyed by its absolute monarch. The tiny southern African kingdom needs to take urgent action as it struggles to maintain spending on HIV/Aids, education and...

Swaziland's King Mswati III accused by activists of human rights abuses and of looting national wealth Coca-Cola has been accused of propping up one of Africa's most notorious dictators. The multibillion dollar beverage company owns a concentrate-manufacturing plant in Swaziland, an impoverished kingdom ruled by Africa's last absolute monarch, Mswati III. ...

The editor-in-chief of the Swaziland Observer newspaper group, Musa Ndlangamandla, was fired last week after 12 years. It appears that he fell out with the group's owner, the king of Swaziland, and the country's prime minister, Barnabas Dlamini. ...

s transport minister, and Brendan Howlin, minister for public expenditure, said there should be sanctions to target poor performance by government officials. In an official paper to be released later this year Howlin hopes to establish clearer lines of accountability . Varadkar called for mechanisms to be introduced to make it easier to sack under-performing civil servants . He said the next stage...

t ignore us Five years ago I found my father via Facebook. I had always known he lived in a small African country called Swaziland, but had never seen or spoken to him. Sadly my father passed away six weeks before I first stepped foot on Swazi soil, but I have visited the country four times since, learning something of this verdant, undulant, landlocked state. Swaziland is one of the world's last absolute...

s history. "We were here during the era of apartheid and this school was an absolute beacon of what was to come," former student Amanda West, a last-minute replacement for Tutu as guest speaker after he withdrew due to illness, told a gathering of alumni, donors and teachers past and present. "As a student population we were wildly involved in the politics … This is an astounding place." Eighty-six...

s harder line Since then, the EU executive has taken a harder line. In 2011, it proposed suspending the agreement if the countries did not ratify the EPA by January 2014. The parliament voted in a strong majority to extend the deadline to October 2014, in a second reading . Botswana, Namibia, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Swaziland have not completed the agreement. They, along with the Pacific...

s government has sold maize donated by the Japanese government to feed hungry Swazis for $3m (£2m) and deposited the money in the Central Bank of Swaziland. The nearly 12,000 tonnes of donated maize was sold by the ministry of economic planning and development in 2011, but the sale was not made public until an item about the transaction appeared in a performance report the ministry presented to the...

t afford to do that As the Swazi government struggles to guarantee a no-cost nationwide primary school system, it finds itself sparring with school principals over the question of whether it is a lack of funds or an abundance of corruption that is standing in the way of its success. Most recently, the government has asked principals of state primary schools to refund an annual top-up fee they have...

s traditions as a route to recognition of their contribution and a return to equality Women in Swaziland are organising to promote their rights and welfare, convinced that discriminatory laws are at odds with the essential roles they play in their families and in their country's economy. "We are taking a page from the past to achieve the recognition Swazi women deserve as the ones who keep this society...

s poorest countries. And this morning senior figures in the Trade Justice Movement, representing over 7 million people, will hand in a letter to Vince Cable, warning the deals the EU is pushing these countries to agree would consign many more people to dire hardship. In a white paper last year the business secretary pledged to ensure trade delivered the best results for development. Yet Europe...

s lavish holiday plans are a misuse of resources that insult impoverished population, say critics Africa's last absolute monarch has been criticised for another display of extravagance after it emerged that three of his wives are to go on a lavish holiday to Las Vegas. The revelation came days after King Mswati III of Swaziland reportedly told his impoverished subjects: " God warned the Swazi people...

s leader, King Mswati III and called for a "feudalistic, archaic form of government" to be replaced by a multi-party democracy. While the Church of England remains locked in internal conflict over the consecration of female bishops, women are a familiar part of the episcopate in some other Anglican churches, including in Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Australia. When Wamukova...

s accompanying measures for sugar protocol (AMSP) , following reform of the European sugar regime in 2006 that led the price for sugar to drop by 36%. This affected not only European sugar beet producers, but sugar cane producers in the 18 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries with preferential access to the EU, the world's biggest producer of beet sugar and the main importer of raw sugar...

s crowned heads gathered at Windsor Castle in celebration of the Queen's diamond jubilee. But as the kings, queens, princes, one emperor, a grand duke and an emir posed for a historic photograph inside the castle's Waterloo Chamber, elsewhere human rights activists condemned it as a platform for "blood-stained despots and tyrants". Perhaps, the Queen's advisers may have reflected, this glittering anniversary...

s crowned heads on Friday. Does one invite the ruler accused of turning a "blind eye" to human rights abuses? Or the one with the "glad eye" and, at the last count, 13 wives? Then there is the cousin who snubs you over a little local difficulty. By Thursday evening, neither Buckingham Palace nor the Foreign Office had released any details of who would be attending the glittering diamond jubilee gathering...