Jesus told us that we would always have the poor among us. But is that an excuse to live as if they aren’t?
Some people seem to think as much. Below are some excerpts from a recent NYT article on the King of Swaziland.
“How can the king live in luxury while his people suffer?” asked Siphiwe Hlophe, a human rights activist. “How much money does he need, anyway?”
That question was as confounding as it was impertinent. In the government’s latest budget, about $30 million was set aside for “royal emoluments.”
But surely the king’s income exceeds that, people said. The royal family also controls a corporate business empire “in trust for the nation,” investing in sugar cane, commercial property and a newspaper. Forbes.com recently listed Mswati III as the world’s 15th wealthiest monarch, estimating his fortune at $200 million.
But is this not the way of the world? The king, after all, is the king. The poor, after all, are the poor.
And then this:
Of course, being king is not without its own difficulties. In 2001, faced with the relentlessness of the AIDS pandemic, Mswati III invoked an ancient chastity rite, asking Swazi maidens to refrain from sex for five years. He then violated his own rule by selecting a 17-year-old as his ninth wife. To show the extent of his regret, he paid the customary fine of one cow.
In 2003, an 18-year-old caught the king’s eye, and some of the royal aides fetched the young woman from her school. The teenager’s mother was unwilling to part with her daughter in this manner and had the audacity to sue the king in a Swazi court. This dispute ended only when the girl convinced her mother that she was happy to become the king’s next bride.
And if that wasn’t enough:
In the film, Mswati III acknowledged the poor: “It’s always very sad when you see a lot of them sick about their lives, how difficult it is, how difficult they are coping, looking after their families and so on. And then you see sometimes that you wish to help them but the funds are always not enough.”
Mswati is not the only African leader guilty of such revolting behavior; many others share similar lifestyles. I read the other day that two thirds of Africa’s wealth is held outside of the continent. This is a bit perplexing, given that international donor money often constitutes up to half of a country’s government spending.
However, maybe we should also ask Siphiwe’s question of ourselves: how much money do we need, anyway?
Read the entire, somewhat cynical, article here.
