King's car declared off limits
By Jonathan Clayton in Mbabane, Swaziland
February 22, 2005
From:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12333947-38195,00.html

KING Mswati III of Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarch, has hit back at mounting criticism of his extravagant lifestyle by banning all photographs of his growing fleet of luxury cars.
The British-educated king, who rules one of Africa's poorest countries, arrived for the opening of the rubber-stamp parliament last Friday in a new Mercedes S600 stretch limousine.
Photographers crowded round but were quickly warned by security guards not to take pictures. Like the rest of his populace, they had expected the 36-year-old monarch to arrive in the $US530,000 ($670,000) DaimlerChrysler Maybach 62 he bought last December.
A royal decree subsequently published in The Times of Swaziland declared it was no longer permissible to take pictures of his majesty "when he alights from his car".
The purchase of the Maybach 62 attracted a storm of criticism and prompted demonstrations against his profligacy in a country enduring food shortages and the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world. Seventy per cent of the population live in absolute poverty and unemployment is 40 per cent.
The king's 1million long-suffering subjects were apparently not aware of the latest addition to a royal household already struggling to cope with his decision earlier this month to take a 13th wife, a 17-year-old former beauty queen who dropped out of school to become a princess.
Every new queen increases the demand on the public purse. So far, the king has spent an estimated $US15 million on building each wife a palace. In a deeply traditional society, he has also to pay the family of his new wife a handsome dowry.
Officially, he has 10 wives and three fiancees. In line with Swazi tradition, the fiancees become wives only after they fall pregnant. To the fury of AIDS activists, who are trying to promote condom use and one-partner sexual relationships, the king has 24 children.
To pacify them, he forbade sexual intercourse. A few days later, he publicly admitted that he had broken his own law and fined himself one cow.
From The Times in London