ICIJ uncovered two phantom gold refineries channeling millions of dollars to Dubai through it. A gainst a backdrop of rolling hills and sugar cane fields, a generous stretch of cleared land borders the small industrial town of Matsapha in central Eswatini, a tiny landlocked African country between South Africa and Mozambique.
Musa Motsa, a year-old farmworker and father of six, grew up on this land. He and his family used to grow cabbage and other crops here and collected water from a nearby spring. Instead, grass and weeds are slowly reclaiming vacant plots. One lone building β a multistory government office complex β stands in a surreal ghost land of nearly acres. There are no remnants of the vibrant community where Motsa once lived.
A tiny kingdom of 1. Over the past two centuries, the tiny kingdom of Eswatini has shifted and evolved β and even changed its name β but one constant has remained in place: the monarchy. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, the country formerly known as Swaziland expanded and contracted its borders, rejected a growing European presence, then came under the control of South Africa and later the British Empire.
The southern African country remained under British rule until the kingdom gained independence in The current king, Mswati III, took the throne in at age The size of the royal family is a secret, but Mswati III reportedly has 11 wives and more than 30 children. The family has earned a reputation for its luxurious lifestyle, despite high poverty rates and unemployment in the tiny country it rules. Pro-democracy protests erupted in , amid a dire economic crisis as citizens pushed back against stifled freedoms, and have continued to simmer through the past decade.
To do this, the government enacted a series of forced evictions from mid until the end of , according to Amnesty International.
