Wednesday, August 5, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-SWAZILAND: A Place Where Culture is Entertainment
James Hall
- The traditional African homestead is called “Swazi Cultural Village”, and since its opening four years ago the site has become Swaziland’s top tourist attraction, a savvy combination of authenticity and show business.
“This is the Africa tourist come to see,” says Bheki Langa, the lead dancer for a men’s dance troupe. “We give them just what they want. But nothing is fake.”
The “entertainers” are in fact ordinary Swazis going about their business. Other than the absence of clutter like the discarded bones and buckets that inevitably litter a typical Swazi homestead, this “village” is pristine, and kept looking fresh by the entertainers themselves.
Nomsa Mdluli leads the women thatching the dome-shaped “beehive” huts, about 20 of them clustered in a narrow picturesque valley near the kingdom’s tallest waterfall.
“We do what we do everyday at our homes, but the visitors find it entertaining,” she says.
The “village” is actually a recreation of a typical multi-generational homestead headed by a polygamous male elder. It is the type of place all Swazis resided in prior to independence, when the towns opened up to African residents. The performers come in the morning and leave at night, but feel they are “at home” doing what comes naturally.
“I do the dances I’ve done all my life. At school, I was on the sibhacca (boys’ dance troupe) team that won a regional competition,” says Bheki. At 11:15 every morning, he and the other young men go to an arena where tourists sit on bamboo bleachers. To the beat of cowhide drums, they put on a vigorous dance display.
“Any Swazi male can do this, because this is our national dance. We are the best because we do it every day for the foreigners,” says Lucky Ndwandwe, another dancer.
Everyone gets into the act. Two elderly women, who are the grandmothers of the village, assume places beneath a tree to one side of the stage, and watch the proceedings. Young ladies form a chorus, and combine their voices with the men to improvise songs for the moment. The lyrics are only a line or two, repeated with tight but changing harmonies.
“A lot of times we sing about anything we see. If we see a tourist wearing a funny hat, we’ll sing, ‘Oh, look at that hat like a frying pan!’ The visitors don’t speak SiSwati, so they can’t be offended. The tour guides who are supposed to translate say we are singing sacred songs,” Nomsa laughs.
After the performance, the entertainers put on a show of another kind: they display ordinary Swazi life that so fascinates and enchants visitors. Women cook and brew beer. The young men do construction work on the huts.
“We call this hut gucasthandaze, which means ‘kneel and pray,” explains Bheki. “The opening is very close to the ground, so you have to kneel and crawl through.”
The young ladies weave the thatched windscreens in a display more authentic than many visitors realise. In keeping with the revived chastity rules reintroduced by King Mswati last year, they wear the colourful woolen headgear that signifies they are maidens. The windscreens they construct are made of the same reeds Swazi girls collect each September to present to the Queen Mother as part of the Reed Dance rituals.
“What we are doing here in the Cultural Village is the same thing other girls are doing at the Queen Mother’s village,” says 17 year-old high school student Thembi Shongwe. “To us, there is nothing special about what we do, or the traditional clothes we wear.”
To foreign tourists, the opposite attitude prevails. “It is wonderful how natural everything is here. We don’t feel like we are seeing a show,” says Julian Grass, a visitor from Hamburg, Germany.
The setting for this “stage” is one of the most beautiful spots in the kingdom, along the banks of the Lusushwana River beneath Mt. Inyonyoni (“little bird”), in a canyon lush with indigenous trees. Although ten minutes by dirt road from the popular tourist hotels of the Ezulwini Valley, the village has an isolated, timeless feel.
With virtually no theatre and few concerts mounted in the country, the type of “performing” on display at the village – Swazis showing off their culture – is one of the few opportunities for aspiring local entertainers. The work is regular, and the pay is good.
As the final dancing takes place in the arena, visitors rush the stage to place contributions beneath a stone at the dancers and singers’ feet. As leader of the troupe, Bheki counts the tips when the tourists leave. The fistful of money he divides among the performers is many times more than they earn through regular salary, and is greater than a factory worker would earn in a week.
“I am proud of my culture. I am happy to show off,” says Bheki, who went through the ritualised initiations to join King Mswati’s warrior regiments. Broad shouldered and muscular, he has a trick of allowing his loin skins to come loose while he does high-kicking movements to the beating drums. He finishes performing nearly naked, allowing the laughing tourist in the bleachers to admire his warrior physique.
“We get more tips when I do that,” says Bheki, who has learned one of the key rules of show business: give the people what they want.
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/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-SWAZILAND: A Place Where Culture is Entertainment
James Hall
- The traditional African homestead is called “Swazi Cultural Village”, and since its opening four years ago the site has become Swaziland’s top tourist attraction, a savvy combination of authenticity and show business.
(more…)
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