It’s not a good time for African queens. Two months ago, the deposed Deji of Akure made the headlines for the wrong reason. Oba Oluwadare Adesina battered his youngest wife, Olori Bolanle Abiola, over what the oba said was “a small domestic affair.” The word in town was that the oba suspected that his wife was having an affair.
Whatever it was, the oba decided to settle the small domestic affair in a big, dramatic way. He drove across town to his in-law’s house where his estranged wife now lives, ordered his thugs to drag her out and showered her with hot ashes.
About 2,800 miles away in the Kingdom of Swaziland another royal spectacle has smeared the headlines. City Press of South Africa scooped a report that Queen Nothando Dube, the 12th of the 14 wives of King Mswati of Swaziland, is in hot soup for shagging with Swazi’s Justice Minister, Ndumiso Mamba. The queen, also called LaDube, is currently in confinement, while the police are holding Mamba by the balls.
No one is sure what LaDube’s or Mamba’s fate will be. The king who was away to Taiwan on a state visit when the devil came knocking, is said to be mulling his options. But for all you care, I have a sneaky feeling that LaDube will be dying for a shower of hot ashes, if it will save her the shame of being ostracised.
There’s not much she can do now. It’s not just a man’s world; it’s the King’s world in Swaziland. And that’s one big difference between Olori Bolanle and LaDube. When the Nigerian Oba battered his wife publicly and claimed that no one had a right to ask him any questions because it was “a small domestic affair,” the public was outraged. The young boys around the area not only rallied to rescue the queen, they chased the king away with sticks.
The state government dilly-dallied at first but was later forced to strip the king off his title and hand him over to the police for prosecution.
In Swaziland, the press cannot even report the sex scandal. Those who read it on the Internet may be doing so in the base of their beds – the kind of place where Mamba hid himself when the police pounced. LaDube cannot squeak, much less get a fair hearing. How can she? She did not have a choice in her marriage in the first place; she was only 16 when she was captured by the king’s roving eyes.
It’s easy to argue that women must learn to accept their lot and stay in their place. Or to say that marital infidelity – especially when women are involved – is wrong. Of course, it is; whoever is involved. But when we root for a culture that robs our children of their childhood; a culture that treats our daughters as boys’ collector’s items; and treats citizens as slaves of their majesty’s pleasure, then we cannot complain too much about our harvest of rotten grapes.
His Royal Majesty, King Mswati, who ascended the throne in 1986, has married an average one wife every two years, most of them, like LaDube, were captured in their teens. In a country where the HIV prevalence rate is put at 40 per cent and poverty is rampant, you would expect some exemplary conduct, or some pretence of it, in royal and high places.
Not in the Royal Villas in Mswati’s kingdom. After imposing a ban on sexual relations for youths under 18 years of age in 2001, the king himself broke the law two months later by taking a 17-year-old as wife and fined himself a cow for the offence. In 2005, the king bought himself a luxury car worth $500,000 as a Christmas present and promised ten of his queens BMW cars worth $820,000.
King Mswati must be mad at Justice Minister Mamba, who literally ate the king’s bread and drank the king’s water, for sleeping with the king’s wife. He would hardly be assuaged by Mamba’s resignation. But I bet the king’s subjects – and anyone who looks up to him for leadership – would have felt similarly betrayed when he broke his own law on sex and teenagers nine years ago.
The real tragedy of Africa, and I think of all those who have been long under tyranny in a patriarchal society , is that the people go on submitting when one more little push might have brought them freedom.
This is true for Olori Bolanle in Nigeria as it is for LaDube in Swaziland. Who would have believed that after pressing a case in court for damages against her husband, Olori Bolanle would call a press conference to appeal that her husband should be forgiven and restored to his throne – the same throne from which she oppressed her without mercy?
I won’t be surprised if LaDube offered to do time in purgatory, just to remain Mswati’s 12th wife.
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