Swazi Women’s Resilience regarding Patriarchy, Marginalization, and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Please check back later for the full article. Swazi women, who are grossly underrepresented in social, political, and economic spheres in contemporary Swaziland, nevertheless have helped to perpetuate the Dlamini dynasty that has ruled the kingdom since its inception in the mid-16th century. The kingdom has been ruled by the Ngwenyama and the Ndlovukazi, in complementary gender roles for the Swazi king and Queen Mother, respectively. Queen Mother Gwamile (1859–1925), a forward-thinking woman and the most prominent Queen Mother and regent, had a tremendous impact on shaping the Swazi polity by promoting the education of both genders and buying back land alienated by concessionaires and European settlers. Yet most women’s marginalization in the public sphere increased markedly during Swaziland’s colonization and has been reinforced in the post-independence period. Swaziland became a peripheral capitalist formation even prior to formal colonization vis-à-vis South Africa. Labor and capital were exchanged unequally, with Swazi men having more employment opportunities in Swaziland and South Africa, resulting in women having more restricted migration and employment opportunities. Often, women were confined to poor, rural homesteads. Furthermore, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in which Swaziland eventually had the highest percentage of cases, has resulted in a higher death rate for women. As independence approached, King Sobhuza II (1899–1982) resisted Westminster-style political institutions in favor of enhanced indigenous institutions. In the post-independence period, he prohibited citizens’ formation of political parties and exercising the franchise at the national level. Swazi women’s parliamentary representation is on the lowest tier in Africa and worldwide. Improvement in the status of Swazi women will require their own activism and the involvement of the international human rights community at various levels.