Eswatini

Eswatini is a small country in Africa.

It has no coast. A king leads the country. Mbabane and Lobamba are its two capitals.

Eswatini is in southern Africa. South Africa wraps around it on three sides, and Mozambique is on the fourth. It has no coast, so we call it landlocked. Until 2018 it was called Swaziland in English; that year King Mswati III changed the official name to the Kingdom of Eswatini.

The country has two capitals: Mbabane, where the government offices are, and Lobamba, where the parliament meets. The 2017 census counted 1,093,238 people. siSwati and English are the official languages.

Eswatini lies on the eastern flank of South Africa where it adjoins Mozambique, about 175 km north to south and 130 km west to east at its widest. The name Swazi comes from Mswati II, a king and nation builder who ruled from 1840 to 1868; on April 19, 2018, Mswati III announced the change from the Kingdom of Swaziland to the Kingdom of Eswatini.

Mbabane is the administrative and judicial capital, and Lobamba the legislative one; the royal villages at Ludzidzini and Phondvo nearby are the traditional heart of Swazi life. The 2017 census counted 1,093,238 people (562,127 female and 531,111 male), 74,789 more than in 2007, an annual growth rate of 0.7%. The lilangeni is pegged 1:1 to the South African rand, which is also legal tender.

Mbabane is a city in the hills.

Manzini is a busy town for shops and factories. The parliament building is in Lobamba. Many families live in homesteads in the countryside.

Mbabane, in the hilly west, was the capital of the British colonial government and is still the center of government offices. Manzini is the main town for business and industry. Lobamba, between them, has the parliament building shown here and other national buildings.

Most Swazis traditionally lived in family homesteads spread across the countryside. A homestead has huts for different family members and a cattle enclosure facing east. Towns grew bigger after World War II, when farms, mines and factories brought jobs.

Mbabane, the former British colonial capital, is the administrative center; Manzini is the commercial and industrial center; Lobamba hosts the houses of parliament. Company towns such as Mhlume, Simunye, Big Bend and Mhlambanyatsi grew around large agricultural, mining and industrial operations after World War II. Britannica gives the urban share as more than one-fifth.

Rural people live under a communal land system run by traditional chiefs. A homestead (umuti) has the headman's hut, huts for his mother, wives and children, kitchens and stores, and the cattle enclosure (isibaya) in front, facing east. Cattle are a store of wealth used on social and ceremonial occasions such as lobola. Near Lobamba stand the royal villages of the king at Ludzidzini and the queen mother at Phondvo.

In the west, the land is high and cool.

In the middle are green hills. In the east, it is low, hot and full of trees and grass. Rivers flow across to the sea.

Eswatini is small, but it has four very different bands of land running from north to south. In the west is the Highveld, rugged mountains with peaks up to 1,862 meters. Next is the Middleveld, rolling hills and green valleys where most people live. Then comes the Lowveld, warm, low savanna. Finally the Lubombo hills rise along the eastern border.

The land drops about 1,200 meters from west to east in only about 80 kilometers, so the west is cooler and wetter than the east. Most rain falls in storms from October to March. Rivers such as the Komati and Usutu cross the country to the Indian Ocean.

Britannica describes four parallel belts, oldest rocks in the west: the Highveld (about 30% of the land; eroded granites and older metamorphic rocks at 1,100–1,400 m, with Bulembu, 1,862 m, and Ngwenya, 1,828 m), called Inkangala, 'a cold, treeless place'; the Middleveld (about one-fourth; 610–760 m), the Swazi heartland; the Lowveld or Bushveld (nearly 40%), a savanna the Swazi call Lihlanze, 'a warm place with trees'; and the Lubombo escarpment (about 5%), cut by the Umbuluzi, Usutu and Ingwavuma gorges.

A fall of about 4,000 feet (1,200 m) over some 50 miles (80 km) creates steep gradients: average monthly maximum and minimum temperatures are 22 and 11 °C in the Highveld but 29 and 15 °C in the Lowveld, and rain falls from about 1,400 mm a year in the Highveld to about 560 mm in the Lowveld. About 80% falls from October to March. Britannica calls Eswatini one of the best-watered countries in southern Africa, with more than 2,600 species of ferns and flowering plants.

Rhinos and zebras live in the game parks.

Hippos and crocodiles live in the rivers. Colorful birds fly over the grass.

Many big animals, such as rhinos, elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos and antelopes, now live mostly in protected reserves, because farms and towns have taken over much of their old land. Smaller animals, such as baboons, monkeys, jackals and mongooses, can still be seen outside the parks, and crocodiles are common in Lowveld rivers.

Birds are everywhere: barbets, weavers, hornbills, the bright lilac-breasted roller and the purple-crested turaco, which people here call a loerie. Storks, swallows and hawks fly in for the summer from as far away as Europe and Asia.

Britannica notes that habitat loss from the growing human population has severely depleted wild fauna; antelope (impala, reedbuck, duiker, waterbuck, wildebeest, kudu), hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe and zebra are found largely in protected reserves. IUCN range maps list both white and black rhinoceros and the African buffalo here as reintroduced, the giraffe as introduced and the African wild dog as historical, no longer present.

Birdlife is abundant, with residents and migrants from central and North Africa and, for storks, swallows and hawks, northern Europe and eastern Asia. Distinctive common birds include barbets, weavers, hornbills, the lilac-breasted roller and the purple-crested loerie. The animal photos here were taken in Namibia and Botswana.

Most people in Eswatini are Swazi.

They speak siSwati and English. Big festivals have songs and dancing. Farmers grow corn and keep cattle.

More than four out of five people in Eswatini are Swazi. The Swazi nation was formed from more than 70 clans, led by the largest clan, the Dlamini. People speak siSwati, a language close to Zulu, and English, which is used in much official writing. Most Swazis belong to Christian churches.

Traditions are still important. Every August, unmarried girls and young women gather for the Umhlanga, or Reed Dance: for five days they cut reeds to repair the windbreaks around the queen mother's village, with songs and dancing. In December comes the Incwala, a six-day national ceremony. Farmers grow corn and sorghum, and sugar is the biggest product sold abroad.

The Swazi nation amalgamates more than 70 clans, some of Sotho and some of Nguni origin, under the ngwenyama (king) and ndlovukazi (queen mother) of the Dlamini clan; uncodified Swazi Law and Custom is recognized constitutionally and judicially. Swazis are more than four-fifths of the population. Most belong to Christian churches, whose missions ran much of the rural education and health care before independence, and many also keep traditional beliefs and practices.

The Umhlanga (August) and the six-day Incwala (December) are both held at the queen mother's capital; music uses the kudu horn, the bow-and-calabash umakweyane, reed flutes and seedpod rattles. Corn is the staple and sorghum is brewed into traditional beer; sugarcane is the largest agro-industry and wood pulp from Highveld pine and eucalyptus plantations the second export. The population is very young: more than one-third under 15. Britannica notes a life expectancy of about 57 years, lowered partly by HIV/AIDS.