The Times: Poverty

Swaziland’s king sends wives on shopping spree while subjects go hungry

Jonathan Clayton reports in his article about the extravagant King Mswati III of Swaziland. He is the last absolute monarch in Africa and controls a country with 1.2 million people. More than two thirds of Swaziland habitants live in abject poverty on less than 50 pence a day. While his country is starving and dying of HIV, he sends 5 of his 13 wives to a "secret" shopping tour through Europe to squander £4 million of the state squander which is originally the money of British tax payers. Britain is Swaziland's biggest aid donor. Now in this case you ask yourself why such a person is allowed to be a ruler of such a needy country and how especially Britain can still accept such acts. In this case the only thing the british government did was to make clear their concern over "governance issues" in Swaziland and no longer give bilateral support.
In my opinion, outsider countries most probably have to interfere in such a situation to stop the unacceptable behavior of the king and build up an educated system of intellectuals, who can rule such a country and help it out of its poverty and don’t use the valuable and important money for personal use.

This is a good example of how nowadays, we do not know where our money goes to anymore. The Britains are not enlightened about what happened to their tax payments, that their money actually ended up in the european economy again in form of luxury goods and does not help poor needy people.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6804538.ece