The current king of Eswatini is Mswati III. His father was Sobhuza II. If you trace the royal family back more generations you eventually come to Sobhuza I. He reigned from about 1816 to 1836. At that time there were no white people in the kingdom. In his history of the nation, J.S.M. Matsebula records this about Sobhuza I.
“One night, shortly before his death, Sobhuza had a vision. In the morning he called his councillors and told them he had dreamt that white-skinned people with hair like tassels of the tail of cattle would arrive in his country, bringing with them two things: umculu and indilinga (a book and round metal = money). The book was taken to represent the Bible, and Sobhuza advised his people to accept this but to try and avoid money. He warned them that they must never harm these white people, for if they spilt a drop of the white man’s blood their country would be destroyed and they would disappear as a nation.”
For a long time the Swazi kings followed the advice of their ancestor’s dream. Swazis never went to war against the Dutch, the English, or the Portuguese who began coming into this area a short time later. As a result of their unwillingness to fight, they remained a nation, although more than half of their land was shared out among the Dutch, the English and the Portuguese. Today a large portion of the Republic of South Africa is really Eswatini’s land, and a smaller portion is held by Mozambique. But at least the Swazis were not destroyed as a people, something that happened to the tribes that violently resisted.
When the white people began coming, it was farmers and tradesmen that came. The people with the book lagged far behind. Sobhuza’s son, Mswati I, sent messengers to various missionaries asking them to set up a mission to his nation. But he had to renew the call repeatedly, over a period of ten years, before any missionaries came and brought the book. Even after the missionaries began to come, it would be almost 150 more years before the Swazis were provided with a Bible in their own language. Until 1997, they had to make due with the Zulu translation.
The photo is of a statue in the town square of Manzini. It represents Sobhuza refusing the money and accepting the book. It is heart-breaking to realise that it took 160 years from the time of his dream until his people had the book in their own language. It is a shameful fact that people who wanted to make money were more willing to risk the dangers of this land than people commissioned by Christ