Princess Sikhanyiso Dlamini is a Swazi princess and politician. She is the eldest daughter of King Mswati III of Eswatini, and is the country’s current Minister of Information and Communication Technology.
Sikhanyiso Dlamini was educated in Britain at a mixed private school, St Edmund’s College, Ware, in Hertfordshire, where she was in Challoner House. She continued to study drama at Biola University in California. In 2012, Princess Sikhanyiso graduated from the University of Sydney with a master’s degree in digital communication. While in Australia, she resided in Glebe with her palace-appointed aide, Yemma Sholo. She is the first child of Inkhosikati LaMbikiza and has more than two hundred blood-related uncles and aunts through her grandfather, King Sobhuza II, who had seventy wives and two hundred and one children. She is also one of his one thousand grandchildren in the Royal Swazi House of Dlamini.
She is the first-born of thirty children born to King Mswati III and Inkhosikati LaMbikiza. She has two hundred aunts and uncles, not including their spouses.
In 2001, Mswati III instituted the umchwasho—a traditional chastity rite—in Swaziland as a means of combating the AIDS epidemic. The princess became a focus of controversy because while she was staying abroad, she was not bound by the strictures of the umchwasho. While studying abroad, Princess Sikhanyiso developed a reputation for ignoring or rebelling against her native country’s traditions.
On 14 December 2003, a report appeared in the Times of Swaziland claiming that Princess Sikhanyiso had gone on a trip to the US and Britain, and that the Swazi government had spent close to E1 million (US$100,000) on her trip. The prime minister’s office subsequently issued a press statement denying these claims.
At the end of the ban in 2005, Princess Sikhanyiso, then 17 years old, celebrated with a party involving loud music and alcohol at the Queen mother’s residence. As punishment for the princess’s disrespect of the royal residence, during which Mswati announced his engagement to a new wife-to-be, an official overseeing traditional affairs beat Princess Sikhanyiso with a stick.
The following year, the princess criticized the institution of polygamy in Swaziland, saying, “Polygamy brings all advantages in a relationship to men, and this to me is unfair and evil.” The princess was subsequently “gagged” by the Royal Palace and the press was not allowed to contact her.
Sikhanyiso said “motherhood is the best experience yet. I have a new earned respect for women, the sacrifices that we make for our children … you have to juggle everything at the same time.”
She went on, “I also appreciate the role of men … in childrearing we should all play our part. I have a renewed impetus, even in the workplace, to say I want to make Eswatini a better Eswatini for my son and the generations to come — for him to grow up in a different Eswatini that is more advanced, economically and holistically.”
