{"id":10464,"date":"2012-05-15T21:08:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T21:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=10464"},"modified":"2012-05-15T21:08:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T21:08:26","slug":"swazis-reject-monarch-in-public-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/05\/15\/swazis-reject-monarch-in-public-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Swazis reject monarch in public poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> A public poll in Swaziland showed that 43% of the population disapproved of Africa\u2019s last absolute monarch, King Mswati\u2019s III, earning a sharp rebuke from the government on Monday.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/King-Mswati.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/King-Mswati-300x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"king1.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"213\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-10467\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe poll by the US-based Gallup ranked Mswati among Africa\u2019s least popular leaders.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfidence in institutions is strongly associated with approval of the chief executive\u2019s performance,\u201d said Gallup in the survey.<\/p>\n<p>But the government rejected the results of the poll which covered leaders of 34 sub-Saharan nations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is like me coming to you and saying seven of your girlfriends say they no longer love you,\u201d said Percy Simelane, the government spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat assurance do you have that I am not telling you all this because I want your girlfriends for myself,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The Swaziland Diaspora Platform, a human rights group based in South Africa, welcomed the findings, saying they proved that the monarchy was not as loved as it would like the world to believe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis vindicates our own observation, together with our local counterparts, that the monarchy is not such a darling to everyone as it would like everyone to believe, hence the need for democracy and respect for human rights,\u201d spokesperson Ntombenhle Khathwane said.<\/p>\n<p>The impoverished kingdom of Swaziland is facing an economic meltdown, with pro-democracy and labour unions blaming the crisis on Mswati\u2019s failure to manage the economy.<\/p>\n<p>The king, who has 13 wives, is accused of using state funds to support his lavish lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>Other leaders who scored low approval rates were President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, the late Bingy wa Mutharikla of Malawi, and Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A public poll in Swaziland showed that 43% of the population disapproved of Africa\u2019s last absolute monarch, King Mswati\u2019s III, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2377,2378,2379,300,2380,2381,2382,258,379,1269],"class_list":["post-10464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-2","tag-african-countries","tag-african-culture","tag-african-language","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-lesotho","tag-monarchy","tag-mswati-iii","tag-malawi","tag-south-africa","tag-swaziland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}