Women's chastity precondition for government scholarships

Rights groups in Swaziland are concerned that Swazi women who want to receive government scholarships must prove their loyalty to the Swazi way of life by showing that they subscribe to the maidens' chastity rules called "umcwasho". The old custom, symbolised by the wearing of colourful woolen headgear, was reintroduced by King Mswati III last year. Mswati is also the chancellor of the University of Swaziland, which is next to the royal palace. Over two-thirds of the education budget goes to scholarships for tertiary students. When scholarship boards interview women candidates, it queries those who do not wear the umcwasho about their loyalty to the Swazi way of life. According to The Times of Swaziland, the board has said government assistance would go to women who support umcwasho. Advocates of the umcwasho rules say the custom ensures chastity as a way to guard against the spread of HIV/AIDS. In a country where 34 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive, they say it is pointless to use government resources on women who do not protect themselves against HIV/AIDS by publicly proclaiming their chastity with umcwasho headbands. Men are not required to wear a similar symbol. Critics of the scholarship board's rule, like the Swaziland Law Society, said there was no evidence that the revived custom was affecting sexual behaviour positively among the young. Lawyers for Human Rights in Swaziland called this way of distributing government scholarship money as "prejudicial, and a violation of human rights". A woman from the commercial city of Manzini, Thandi Ndzinisa, observed: "The women in the market are doing good business selling these umcwasho tassels. The girls wear them to their scholarship board hearings, and then throw them away." A visit to the campus of the University of Swaziland this week found no women students wearing umcwasho headbands. Although men are not required to wear chastity symbols, they are required to pass loyalty tests if they want to join the army. "Recruits into the army will now be selected from the traditional regiments," said Captain Khanya Dlamini, the spokesman for the Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force. An umbutfo is a traditional Swazi warrior, and all Swazi men are grouped with their age-mates in traditional regiments. However, only a small minority of men go through the initiations to become warriors. The young men's Tinkanyenti (stars) regiment has less than a thousand active members. Warriors take an oath to defend the Swazi king, and engage in symbolic work to show their fealty to the monarch. The warriors weed and harvest the sorghum field at Engabezweni, the king's royal village 25 km east of the capital, Mbabane. In an effort to bestow coveted army jobs on palace loyalists, the army will now accept only men who have undergone the traditional rituals to become Swazi regimental warriors. Swazis have always prided themselves in their traditions. Swazi kings safeguarded the integrity of cultural practices against the hostility of British colonial authorities for nearly a century, while the traditions of other African nations were either banned or atrophied with the arrival of modernity. "On one hand, Swaziland is what political scientists call 'pre-modern' - feudal, with most of the population's peasant farmers under chiefs. Political opposition is banned, and there's no guaranteed human rights. But many Swazis see the country as a grand welfare state where their needs are met by the king, who is a father figure and who protects their country from incorporation into South Africa," said Willis Khumalo, a political science student at the University of Swaziland. "I like Swazi traditions, and I am proud to be Swazi. But the palace has made the observation of cultural practices a loyalty test on the monarchial system. We should not politicise tradition," he said. "Loyalty tests only go to prove that institutions like the army and the university exist in the eyes of the ruling authorities to affirm their own power, and do not exist primarily for the benefit of the people of Swaziland," a source with Women in Law in Southern Africa's Swaziland branch told IRIN. A palace insider said: "It is just common sense that people who do not subscribe to Swazi values not be given scholarship money or jobs in the army. What type of Swazis do we want our university to produce? What type of soldiers do we want defending our king?"