KING MSWATI of Swaziland has a housing problem. Like many husbands, he finds his family has ambitions for something better. So to please his ten wives and two fiancées he is demanding £8 million to build them new palaces.

Oblivious to the country’s dire economic plight, Africa’s last absolute monarch will spend an estimated 100 million emalangeni, in the local currency, on the palaces.

“This is long overdue,” one senior palace official said. “The King’s wives have to have their own palaces. In terms of Swazi culture, the King cannot continue to use his father’s royal residences to accommodate his wives.”

The palaces will be built at sites around the country, roughly the size of Belgium, to highlight the elevated status of the wives in the regions where they were born.

Work has started already in eastern Swaziland, where King Mswati is building a luxury complex for Nontsetselelo Magongo, his ninth wife. A two-storey palace at Buhleni in northern Swaziland has been all but completed and another is planned for Zena Mahlangu, 19, the teenager whom King Mswati abducted two years ago to be his eleventh wife.

The spending spree, in a country where 80 per cent of the one million people are landless peasants living on less than 50p a day, has been denounced by the banned political opposition as evidence that the King has lost touch with his people. Swaziland carries a £145 million budget deficit, one third of the population depends on handouts from the World Food Programme to fend off starvation and unemployment is in excess of 40 per cent. But that did not stop the Government spending £800,000 on luxury cars and homes for King Mswati’s relatives.

In addition to a poor harvest expected in March and April because of lower-than-average rainfall, Swaziland is confronted with a daunting HIV/Aids crisis in which 38 per cent of the population is estimated to be infected.

Another cloud hanging over the country’s finances is a pending £3 million lawsuit as compensation for abandoning plans to buy a £24 million jet for the King’s personal use. The purchase was originally approved by the King’s courtiers in 2002, but was blocked by parliament.

After general elections in October, which were boycotted by pro-democracy groups, King Mswati selected most of the 17 ministers in his Government. Under Swazi law, voters can cast their ballots only for individuals because of the ban on political parties.

Mario Masuku, leader of the outlawed People’s United Democratic Movement, said that his party would continue its fight to bring about the “liberation” of Swaziland and its people from King Mswati’s absolute rule.

“Never before has this country been buried in the damp and dirty blankets of social crisis, deep injustice, economic decay and despicably bad Government,” he said.

• President Mbeki of South Africa started a two-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday at the head of a high-level delegation seeking to build trade ties with the country and ease its return to democracy after years of war.

HOW TO JOIN THE ROYAL HAREM

King Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II, married more than 100 women, with whom he is said to have had more than 600 children

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