By Velaphi Mamba.

King Mswati III is reportedly planning yet another lavish spectacle to mark 40 years on the Throne, having been installed in 1986. 

Whispers from within royal circles suggest that global superstar Beyoncé Knowles is being courted at an alleged fee of US$7 million, alongside a lineup of other costly international artists. 

While this invitation remains an allegation at this stage, its very plausibility has ignited public outrage. In a country collapsing across nearly all socioeconomic indicators, even the rumour of such extravagance is a slap in the face of the poor emaSwati. It is an insult to the collective intelligence and dignity of emaSwati.

History offers powerful metaphors for moments like this. Emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned, serenading himself as disaster consumed the empire. 

Marie Antoinette, in revolutionary France, is apocryphally remembered for suggesting that starving peasants eat cake when they demanded bread. These stories endure not because of their literal accuracy, but because they capture a recurring truth: when rulers retreat into excess while their people suffer, they expose the moral bankruptcy of their rule. They also inspire a great sense of moral outrage that often pushes the masses to doing the unthinkable. 

It would serve the King well to read history and read it well. It is unkind to autocratic arrogance that insists on lavish and wanton displays of obscene wealth in the face of epic hunger and starvation of the people.

Eswatini today is a nation in quiet crisis – nation in catastrophic distress. Unemployment, particularly among the youth, is endemic. Public hospitals are chronically underfunded and short-staffed. Schools struggle with overcrowding and a lack of basic learning materials. 

Infrastructure has decayed alarmingly, with the on-going heavy rains washing away roads and bridges, cutting communities off from food supplies, transport, and healthcare. Foot-and-mouth disease, climate shocks, and economic stagnation compound the misery. For millions, daily life is a struggle for survival, not celebration. Indeed, there is nothing to celebrate.

Against this backdrop, the royal family’s long and well-documented history of extreme largesse and excess becomes impossible to ignore. 

King Mswati’s birthdays have become an annual ritual of opulence, marked by extravagant ceremonies, imported luxury, and vast public expenditure. In some years, the country has witnessed not one but double celebrations, effectively extending royal festivities while citizens tighten their belts. These birthdays are not modest cultural observances; they are sprawling state-funded spectacles that consume millions annually.

Over the decades, the cumulative cost of these celebrations, combined with luxury vehicles, palaces, private jets, shopping sprees abroad, and lavish lifestyles for the royal household, is estimated to run into the billions. Billions that could have been invested in human development, job creation, healthcare systems, and resilient infrastructure. 

Instead, public funds are routinely diverted to sustain a lifestyle that resembles a medieval court rather than a modern constitutional order or a nation in progress.

Defenders of the monarchy often argue that such celebrations are cultural, that they promote unity, tradition, or tourism. This argument collapses under scrutiny and fails the litmus test of the collective national interest. Culture does not require excess. 

Tradition does not demand waste. And tourism does not thrive on inequality and repression dressed up with spectacle. Once-off events featuring global celebrities do not translate into sustainable economic benefits for ordinary people. 

They create fleeting headlines, not lasting livelihoods. What is particularly galling is the symbolism of celebrating “40 years in power.” For many emaSwati, these four decades have not delivered progress, prosperity, or freedom. Instead, they have entrenched absolute monarchy, concentrated wealth and power within a small royal elite, and systematically closed democratic space. Political parties remain banned. Dissent is criminalised. Activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers have faced harassment, jail, exile, and even assassination. 

The social contract between ruler and ruled has been eroded to the point of collapse.In this context, the alleged Beyoncé invitation is not merely about one artist or one fee. It is about what the monarchy chooses to honour and prioritise in the face of ubiquitous national suffering. It sends a chilling message to the unemployed graduate, the underpaid nurse, the rural family without clean water, and the patient turned away from an understaffed clinic: that their suffering is secondary to royal vanity and self-congratulation. 

It is also about the despicable way in which royalty treats local artists – choosing to spend so much money on a global artist is a vote of no confidence on local talent.

Eswatini does not need another birthday, jubilee, or coronation-style concert. It needs leadership grounded in empathy, accountability, and restraint. It needs a serious national conversation about poverty, inequality, climate resilience, and democratic reform. 

It needs resources directed toward rebuilding schools, clinics, roads, and livelihoods, not importing celebrity glamour to distract from systemic failure. History is unforgiving to rulers who confuse spectacle with legitimacy. Nero’s Rome burned, and his legacy is one of madness and decay. 

The French monarchy’s detachment from popular suffering ended not in music but in revolution. These are not distant or irrelevant lessons; they are warnings written in blood and fire.

EmaSwati have nothing to celebrate under the current political and socio-economic order. For many, each royal birthday or jubilee is a painful reminder of exclusion and neglect. If the monarchy were truly concerned with national unity, it would cancel extravagant celebrations and redirect every cent toward urgent social needs. It would open the political space, listen to its citizens, and accept that genuine legitimacy flows from consent, not coercion or ceremony.

The alleged plans for a lavish 40-year celebration, complete with global superstars, crystallise everything that is wrong with Eswatini’s governance. They epitomise a monarchy that is out of touch, insulated by privilege, and unwilling to confront its own failures. The democratic forces of the country must therefore fast track efforts to save Eswatini from a greedy and anachronistic system. The nation is burning. 

This is no time for fiddles, cake, or endless billion-rand celebrations. I hope that the so-called invitation to Beyoncé is not true. But if it is, I can only hope that she gets to read this article and turn it down in solidarity with our people. Nero is fiddling, Beyoncé must not help him burn Rome!. It is time.