A Drive to Swaziland

My dad has made friends with a South African/Swazi couple named Norman and Faith. Norman used to be CEO of a guarantee fund who was one of USAID's local partners for my dad's project, and he and my dad got to be friendly. Norman was always inviting our family to visit their home in Swaziland, so we were lucky enough to be able to go this weekend now that I was in Africa as well.

Swaziland is a small kingdom, one of the world's few remaining absolute monarchies, located on the eastern edge of South Africa and bordering Mozambique. The kingdom is a small part of the ancestral Swazi land holdings, which used to reach through Mpumalanga province and part of Kwa-Zulu Natal as well. Even Maputo and the surrounding area used to be part of Swaziland. Now King Mswate III rules and famously has 14 wives, the youngest of which was 17 when they wed and the wedding took place during a 5 year sex ban for younger people in the country, in an attempt to lower the shockingly high AIDS infection rate.

I had a meeting in Sandton on Friday morning, so we left around 9:30am, and of course got stuck in morning traffic heading to Pretoria (after getting stuck in hideous traffic getting to Sandton, which resulted in me and my boss being late for our meeting). Once we got on the N1 towards eMahelene (can't they just say EAST??) traffic thinned out and we were treated to a long drive of rolling wheat fields and power lines. Yup, that's Gauteng province. Eventually we passed into Mpumalanga (my favorite province name!) and left the highway for two lane local roads. The last 50k or so before crossing the border into Swazi takes you through an enormous tree farm with acres and acres of pine trees and sawmills. It's pretty country, despite the uniform lines of trees marching across the horizon.

The South Africa-Swazi border is a pain in the ass to cross, mainly because the South African side of the border station is a pathetically crappy and depressing low-ceilinged corridor with not enough windows open. The line goes down the hall, out the door and into the road. Commercial truckers are mixed in with regular passenger cars and there is only one customs window open for SARS declarations, hence the long line. We had to declare our car and show the registration number as well as any electronics we brought in. I didn't feel like looking up the serial numbers of our cameras so I just made them up. Yeah, I'm a scofflaw!

Then, once your vehicles and electronics are declared, you then must shove into the masses at the immigration windows. The woman who handled our passports simply could not find my parents' long-term residency permits in their passports and had to call over her supervisor, who of course found them immediately. I guess she was confused by the Slovak and Croatian long-term residency permits which were also in their passports, as well as the multiple passport pages extensions. Once we cleared South African customs, we then had to get back in the car and drive across the no-mans land to clear Swazi customs, which were much simpler. The Swazi border station is a bright and airy room with friendly employees and only a 50 rand road tax, which seems fair. There is no visa fee to enter Swaziland and we all had our passports stamped with no issues.

We were pleased to note that the Swazi road system was excellent, with a large, divided multi-lane highway as well as well-maintained local two-lane roads. My only grump is that people tend to drive extremely slowly, 60km even in 120km sections. Even the minibus taxis drive slowly! After playing Gran Turismo: Johannesburg edition for so long, it was refreshing.

Central South Africa, including Johannesburg, is located on a high plateau. Swaziland is where that plateau begins to head down to the sea, although the country is decorated with many picturesque mountain ranges. Our hosts' house is in a down called Ezulwini, which means heaven. It is an apt name, as it is located in a mountain valley with two impressive mountain ranges on either side. They have a clear view of Execution Rock, which is where the old king used to push offenders off, including political activists who wished to do away with the monarchy!

Our drive took us six hours, so we were quite tired when we arrived. After a chance to nap and freshen up, Faith and Norman took us to their friend's Portuguese/Mozambiquan restaurant for dinner. We had a fabulous meal of prawns, fish, chicken, livers, pork sausage and spicy, spicy curries. We met the proprietress, Auntie Nan, a dynamic, hilarious woman who was wearing a very glamorous caftan sewn by King Mswate III's tailor himself and her enormous and quiet husband, Justin. Her restaurant was hopping with locals who all stopped by our table to say hello as well as plenty of out of towners who were in Swazi for the big mountain bike race to be held on Saturday. Faith and Norman call Swaziland "Smallville" because everyone knows everyone else with the population under 1 million citizens.

After our long dinner, fueled by much sangria consumption, we rolled off to bed with the warning that the day trip to Mozambique would start at 7am and we had to be ready and well rested!