Wanted: Revolution

And the award for country most in need of revolution goes to ... Swaziland.

According to this BBC report, the absolute monarch of the impoverished land that has the highest HIV rate in the world, approaching one in two, has selected his 13th wife, a 17-year-old girl who will now drop out of school to become his bride after travelling to South Africa to undergo the requisite HIV test.

By custom, she does not officially become his wife until he impregnates her.

King Mswati III, who rules by absolute fiat, was criticised some years ago when he declared a ban on all sexual relations for girls under 18 as his principle anti-AIDS policy and then violated it two months later by taking an underaged girl as his ninth wife, for which he fined himself one cow.

Having learned his lesson this time, the king recently lifted the openly ridiculed teen sex ban, which had affected nearly half the population in a country where life expectancy is under 35.

At 36, the Swazi monarch married his twelfth wife, aged 18, in June, less than three weeks after marrying his eleventh. He has 27 children.

Two-thirds of the immiserated Swazi population earn less than a dollar a day, and about one-third rely on food aid for survival, while the regime spends 100 million emalangeni ($16m) to refurbish palaces for the king's wives, each of whom also receives a BMW automobile at her disposal. Last year the king purchased a luxury Maybach for himself valued at half a million dollars.

Earlier this week, trade unions held a general strike to protest at a new constitution, which they said would entrench the king's powers...

Is it time to quietly change the locks at Versailles?