October 25, 2002	Friday	Sha’aban 18,1423

MBABANE: For the third time in a row at a major public event, the nine wives of Swaziland’s King Mswati III’s on Wednesday failed to turn up at the airport to meet him upon his arrival from a trip to Qatar, Thailand and Botswana.

The women were protesting the king’s recent move to take three new brides, including a schoolgirl, inside sources at the palace in this southern African kingdom said.

The “strike” came just a day after the country’s High Court took the unprecedented step of ordering the release of an 18-year-old girl abducted by the king’s representatives to become his 11th wife.

Three weeks ago, the wives were conspicuously absent when King Mswati arrived at the airport from a Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Angola.

Flimsy excuses were given by the governor of the royal residences, but when the women failed to turn up for the police passing out parade last week, the speculation started to mount.

Their absence on Wednesday confirmed the rumours and when he disembarked from the plane clad in Arab attire, the king looked like a man walking into a crisis.

The wives are said to have flatly refused to attend any public functions, arguing that the 34-year old king was more interested in schoolgirls than his legal wives. The women are said to be dissatisfied and are thinking about asking for divorce.

On Tuesday, the High Court ruled in favour of the mother who took the royalty to court following the abduction of her 18-year-old daughter, Zena, three weeks ago to become Mswati’s next wife. The judge ordered Zena returned to her mother by Thursday,

But on Tuesday, armed police at the gates of the guest house where Zena has been kept since her abduction, refused to accept the court order directing that the girl was to be released to the custody of her mother.

Upon his arrival at the airport, Mswati denied any knowledge of the court case and blamed local journalists for peddling lies about him to the foreign press.

He criticized local journalists for dwelling on negative issues rather than promoting the welfare of the small African kingdom, situated between the South African and Mozambican border.

The issue of the independence of the courts has been coming to a head in recent months. Just last month, the Swaziland government ordered all high court judges to refrain from making judgments that might threaten the powers of the absolute monarch.—dpa