King Who Renamed His Country
In this post
A party in Manzini
Picture the scene. A stadium in Manzini, packed and loud. Drums, dancing, flags everywhere. The date is 19 April 2018, and the party is a double one: the country is celebrating fifty years of independence from Britain, and King Mswati III is celebrating his fiftieth birthday on the very same day.
At a birthday party, the guest of honour normally receives the gifts. This king did the opposite. He stood up, in front of the crowd and the cameras, and handed his entire country a present nobody had ordered: a new name. From that day forward, he announced, the Kingdom of Swaziland would be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini.
One sentence in a speech. That was all it took, because Mswati III is an absolute monarch, the last one left in Africa. He has ruled since 1986, and when he decides something in his kingdom, it simply happens.
Some background helps the scene make sense. Mswati III came to the throne in 1986, when he was only eighteen years old, succeeding his father, Sobhuza II, whose reign had lasted more than eighty years. The king is known by the title Ngwenyama, which means “the lion”, and he is famous for wearing traditional dress at national ceremonies. In his kingdom, political parties are not allowed to take part in elections, and the king appoints the prime minister. So the stadium announcement was not a proposal, a debate or a vote. It was a decision, delivered as a birthday speech, and it became real the moment the words left his mouth.
Swaziland, eSwatini: what the words mean
The two names sound different, but they are reaching for the same idea.
eSwatini comes from siSwati, the language of the Swazi people, and it means “land of the Swazis”. Swaziland was built differently: it takes the word “Swazi” and bolts the English word “land” onto the end of it. Critics of the old name describe it as a mixture, half local and half English, left over from the years of British rule. The country had been a British territory from 1903 until independence arrived on 6 September 1968.
Here is the detail that surprises most people. When other African nations won their independence, many of them threw away their colonial-era names at once. Swaziland did not. It kept the old name for a full fifty years, which is why the king could present the change, half a century later, as unfinished business.
The reasons the king gave the crowd
The king offered the stadium two main reasons, and both are easy to understand.
First, pride and history. “African countries on getting independence reverted to their ancient names before they were colonised,” he told the crowd, according to Agence France-Presse. Other nations had done it in the 1960s. His country, he argued, was simply catching up.
Second, a very practical irritation. The names Swaziland and Switzerland look and sound alike in English, and the king complained that the mix-up followed his people everywhere they travelled abroad. Citizens of his small kingdom were tired of being greeted as if they came from a wealthy country in the Alps. One small word change, and the confusion ends forever.
He had been practising the name for years
The announcement shocked the crowd, but it should not have shocked anyone who had been listening carefully.
At home, in everyday siSwati, people had called their country eSwatini all along. The word even appeared as a subtitle on national passports. And the king himself had been road-testing the name on big stages for years. He used “the Kingdom of eSwatini” at the state opening of parliament in 2014. He used it again when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 2017, without explaining himself to anyone. Seen that way, April 2018 was not the birth of a new name. It was the moment an old, familiar word finally got the official stamp.
Applause, jokes and a court case
Reaction around the world arrived fast. Newsrooms loved the story. Some Swiss readers joked their relief that the mix-ups might finally stop. About six weeks after the speech, the country’s representative formally informed United Nations headquarters in New York, and the UN adopted the new name. The African Union and the Southern African Development Community switched quickly too.
At home, feelings were mixed, and honestly so. One young man in Manzini told AFP reporters, “I like the new name — it is more African,” adding that Swaziland had been the British name and now the country had its own. Others were frustrated. The BBC’s correspondent in the country reported real anger among some citizens, who felt the king should spend his energy on the struggling economy instead of on renaming things.
Then came the serious objection. Lawyer and activist Thulani Maseko argued that a country’s name is its identity, and that no single person should be able to change it by royal command, without asking the people or going through parliament. Maseko and the Institute for Democracy and Leadership took the matter to court, arguing that the constitution sets out legislative processes for such decisions and that those processes had simply been skipped. Supporters of the king answer a fair question in return: in a monarchy like this one, who else did people expect to make such a call? There is also a historical wrinkle the critics raise. Some say the genuinely ancient name of the land was kaNgwane, after King Ngwane III, which means the “return to the old name” argument is not as simple as it sounds. Both sides deserve to be heard, because both are partly right.
In May 2018, the change was written into law through Legal Notice No. 80 of 2018, published in the official Gazette and treated as having taken effect from 19 April. The notice added that any mention of Swaziland in laws, international agreements or legal documents should now be read as Eswatini.
What changed, and what stayed exactly the same
So what did ordinary people actually notice? Less than you might expect, and more than you might think.
Money stayed familiar. The currency kept its name, the lilangeni, and it remains linked in value to the South African rand. For a while, banknotes still carried the word “Swaziland”, even as the central bank began using eSwatini. The country’s ISO code stayed SZ, and its internet domain stayed .sz. Passports, laws and official documents moved over step by step, since the Gazette notice meant old documents naming Swaziland were still legally understood.
Other changes were slow, physical and faintly comic. Police stations replaced their signs one at a time. At the university, workmen removed the nine letters spelling “Swaziland” from the big entrance sign, and months later the gap was still empty, waiting for new letters to arrive. Officials kept tripping over their own tongues, starting sentences with the old name and correcting themselves halfway through. Souvenir sellers had to decide what to carve next: some buyers still wanted Swaziland on their fridge magnets, and some wanted eSwatini. AFP reported that the whole exercise was estimated to cost the government up to $6 million, a figure critics quoted often in a country where many people are poor.
My own feeling is that the blank space on that university sign tells the truth about every name change in history: a king can rename a country in one afternoon, but a country renames itself slowly, in banknotes and signboards and habits, over years. The word on the map changed in a day. The word in people’s mouths is taking longer, and perhaps that is exactly as it should be.
Common questions
When exactly did Swaziland become eSwatini? King Mswati III announced the change on 19 April 2018, during the Golden Jubilee celebrations in Manzini. A legal notice published in May 2018 made it official and treated it as effective from the day of the announcement.
Does the name Swaziland still exist anywhere official? The United Nations, the African Union and other international bodies now use Eswatini. The old name survives in history books, on older documents and banknotes from before the change, and in everyday speech, where many people still use both names.
Did the money change? No. The currency is still called the lilangeni (emalangeni in plural), and it is still pegged to the South African rand, which is also accepted in the country. Only the country’s name printed around it changed, and even that happened gradually.
Why do some people spell it “Eswatini” and others “eSwatini”? Both spellings refer to the same name. The king announced it as “eSwatini”, following siSwati spelling habits, while many international organisations write “Eswatini” with a capital E, the usual style for a country name in English.
Can a king really rename a country by himself? In an absolute monarchy, effectively yes, and that is precisely what critics object to. The court challenge argued that citizens and parliament should have been involved. The government treated the announcement as valid from the start, formalised it in the Gazette, and the new name has been used ever since.
