AFRICANEWS

Swaziland

No sex, trousers, or handshakes, please

Culture

King Mswati took the occasion of his 33rd birthday celebration to prohibit young women from having sex before marriage, wearing trousers, and shaking hands with men. Responds one feisty young woman, "I personally have no intention of abandoning fashion because some polygamous old chief wants to add more virgins to his collection of wives."

In Swaziland, the traditional leadership has decreed drastic rules for all unwed young women to follow, and heavy penalties for those who fall pregnant, wear trousers, or even shake hands with men. In sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarchy, women are legally minors, and the rules intended to reassert traditional values and chastity were set without taking into consideration the views of the modern Swazi maidens themselves.

A five year ban on sexual activity has been decreed for all post-pubescent girls and unwed young women. The measure is intended to reintroduce chastity and customary values. No concomitant decree was issued to restrain Swazi men.

When the announcement was made at King Mswati's birthday celebration, which is an annual national holiday, the king cautioned his male subjects: "Those of us who were about to propose love to these girls should wait until the end of the five-year period; the girls would be ready and matured by then."

All Swazi girls must wear woollen headgear with long tassels down the back to signify their virginity, even as part of school uniforms. These are called umcwasho, the name also given to the system of lifestyle rules. Girls up to 18 years will wear blue tassels, and young women 19 and older will wear red tassels.

Commented Vusie Ginindza, editor of the Sunday edition of the Times of Swaziland: "The umcwasho dangling from the nape of an otherwise well-dressed modern girl can only stick out like a cockroach on a wedding cake."

Lungile Ndlovu, a student at the Swaziland Institute of Technology who is the traditional head of her age group, said disobedient girls would be put on trial without legal representation at chiefs' courts.

Speaking at the king's 33rd birthday celebration, Ndlovu said that the shaking of a man's hand by a maiden is also a punishable offence. Dietary restrictions have been mandated: proscribed are certain animal organs and bread crust. Swazi maidens may only eat the inner portion of a loaf of bread.

Also, the wearing of pants by women has finally been banned in the conservative kingdom. Efforts by traditional leaders to prohibit women from wearing pants have been made at intervals since national independence in 1968. It has never worked before. Thousands of maidens wearing traditional attire were at the king's birthday celebration when the announcement was made of the new rules they must live by. They reacted with vocal dismay to the news that they may not wear tracksuits, tights or other forms of pants, or shave their heads, as is the current fashion.

The new rules are intended to make Swazi maidens obey traditional authority, but palace spokesmen insist say there are health issues involved. One U.N. study reported that up to one-third of the country's population is infected with HIV. Particularly in rural areas, where chiefs will enforce the chastity rules, the HIV infection rate is high. One common superstition among Swazi men is that if they have sex with a virgin, they will be cured of AIDS.

Women's groups and human rights organisations have already protested that decreeing personal behaviour has no place in the modern age.

"The country and its girls are far removed from the era when all Swazi women remained at their parental homesteads until arranged marriages brought them into polygamous arrangements at spousal homesteads," said Doo Apane, an attorney with the Swaziland branch of Women In Law in Africa. "Those were the days before education."

Furthermore, the prohibition on sex is one-sided, she feels. A pregnant girl will be put on trial at a chief's kraal, and fined one cow, the equivalent of a month's salary for the average worker. The man who impregnated her will also be fined a cow, but in a country where DNA testing is unknown, fatherhood will be difficult to prove.

Because cows are considered status symbols, and no Swazi man wishes to part with one, health workers worry that girls fearful of the wrath of fathers who must pay the pregnancy fine of one cow will seek illegal abortions.

"Rather than stop the spread of AIDS, the sex ban may increase it because some girls will tell their boyfriends not to wear condoms and leave 'evidence' behind," says Thabsile Dlamini, a nurse in Manzini.

The Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse, a non-government organisation that counsels victims of rape and incest, is alarmed by the ban on pants. The organisation released a statement saying it has documented cases where the attempted rape of women has been prevented because the women were wearing pants. The pants delayed the rapists long enough to get discouraged, and leave.

But violence against women continues. One of the kingdom's daily newspapers carried a front-page story about taxi drivers at the Mbabane bus station who striped naked a woman wearing a mini-skirt, presumably to teach her to honour traditional ways. No arrests were made

However, now the girls themselves are being heard. Perhaps because the sex ban seems unreal to them, few girls have spoken out on the matter. Or perhaps it is as one parent in the capital Mbabane put it: "Swazi girls don't talk about sex, they just do it." So do Swazi men, who are reluctant to talk about anything that has to do with sex, but have managed to give one of Africa's smallest countries one of the world's highest population growth rates and HIV infection rates.

But on the prohibition of pants - the wearing of which will also draw a one-cow fine - young women are filling newspaper letters to the editor pages with outrage. Swazi girls favour expensive, imported, tight-fitting blue jeans, and by all accounts they look great in them. The modern maidens are upset that traditional lifestyle rules that predate colonial times are being imposed after many years without consulting any girls. One letter writer said, "I personally have no intention of abandoning fashion because some polygamous old chief wants to add more virgins to his collection of wives."

Such language and forceful opinions from young women would have been unknown a few years ago in this conservative kingdom. And it is the clearest signal yet that the resurrection of old customs cannot be mandated without the consent of those they will affect.

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