... the top ten for dictators ?
In the Royal Village of Swaziland, thousands of young women have bared their breasts and danced for the King in the hope of trading a life of poverty for one of royal comfort as the newest of King Mswati's many wives.
The 36-year-old king picks a new bride each year at the 'Reed Dance' in a royal ritual that is defended by traditionalists as a time-honored piece of the nation's cultural fabric. King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, has 11 wives and a fiancee.
Mswati lives a lavish lifestyle in the small southern African kingdom, which is fighting poverty and drought and is ravaged by HIV/AIDS, (estimated to infect as much as a third of Swaziland's one million citizens). Combined with a high birth rate, this swells the number of reed dancers, aged from five to nineteen.
"My mother tries to support me after my father died of AIDS, but we are fed by the World Food Program. I want to live in a palace. The rain comes through the roof of our mud hut". said hopeful Amy Simelane, 15.
"I want to drive around in a Mercedes car. I don't care if I have to share the king with 20 other women". said another dancer, Thab'sile Dlamini, aged just 13.
They were just two of more than 20,000 young women and girls, (which palace sources said was a record), who danced in the festivities on Monday for King Mswati. Clad in his traditional leopard loin-skin, the King watched from the royal box, smiling broadly as his aides videotaped the girls for future reference.
Swaziland on Sunday rejected a human rights report naming its' king as one of the world's 10 worst dictators.
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