Judge sacked for challenging King's marriage

The fallout from a mother's court battle to prevent her daughter from becoming the 10th wife of the King of Swaziland has plunged sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarchy into crisis and further damaged the country's reputation on human rights.

King Mswati's intolerance of dissent reached new levels this week when he in effect fired the country's most senior judge. Chief Justice Stanley Sapire woke up on Wednesday to read newspaper advertisements seeking applicants to fill his job. Judge Sapire had angered King Mswati by ignoring a royal decree to drop the case brought by Lindiwe Dhlamini, who was challenging the alleged abduction of her 18-year-old daughter, Zena Mahlangu, chosen to become the young King's wife.

In a further twist this week, the chief prosecutor, who is also under pressure to resign for supportingthe case, alleged that senior government officials broke into his office on Tuesday night as part of a campaign to "persecute" him. They changed the locks and performed "devilish activities", he alleges. Lincoln Ng'arua brought in a priest to "cleanse" his office of witchcraft. He produced video footage to support his claim but told the BBC that it was "too immoral to be shown in public".

The court case brought by Mrs Dhlamini has been dropped after her daughter said she did not object to becoming a queen. But it has shone a spotlight on the absolute power of the monarch. Scores of bare-breasted virgins are paraded annually before the King at the traditional Reed Dance ceremony where he picks a new bride. It was at one such ceremony in September that he spotted Zena.

The 34-year-old King, who was educated at Sherborne, the British public school, rules his one million people by decree and is determinedly resisting any pressures to reform. Scores of opponents of the regime have been jailed. The sacking or attempted sacking of top figures in the judiciary has prompted comparisons with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

His grip on the media is also tightening and journalists complain of intensified harassment. A newspaper editor was forced to resign for publishing a story claiming that one of the King's wives was a high school drop-out. Criticism of the monarchy is banned. Mswati can close a newspaper or radio station, or ban any book or magazine by decree. He has tried to push through a decree banning legal challenges to his executive decisions.

A quarter of Swaziland's population is on the verge of starvation in an unprecedented famine. A quarter of the population is infected with HIV. But while aid agencies have appealed for £12m to buy emergency food relief, King Mswati has put a down-payment of £1.7mon a £32m private jet.

He overruled his parliament, which voted against buying the plane last month.

Mswati is upholding the tradition of his father, King Sobhuza, who reigned for 61 years and had 68 wives and hundreds of children. Sobhuza scrapped the constitution in 1973 and banned political parties. Swaziland's powerful neighbour, South Africa, has been urged to rein in the King.