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| The Reed Dance ceremony, pictured, is known as Umhlanga and sees
thousands of Swaziland's 'prettiest virgins' dance topless for King
Mswati III, every August, hoping to be his next wife.
|
Miss Ngobeni was
forced to abandon a comfortable lifestyle in a private boarding school
as her aunt, who was her chief guardian, arranged the escape to England
to join her mother, who moved to Birmingham five years earlier, fleeing
an abusive husband.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ she said. ‘Nobody has ever turned down the king or dares to disobey him, so I just disappeared.’
Since
her arrival in England, Miss Ngobeni has become a vocal opponent of the
oppressive Swazi regime, where political opposition parties are banned
and activists routinely arrested or assaulted.
However, Miss Ngobeni’s high-profile
activities, including weekly protests outside the Swazi embassy in
London with activist group Swazi Vigil, have caught the attention of the
authorities in her home country and she now believes she is in more
danger than ever.
She said: ‘Recently I had news that
people had been sent from Swaziland to come and get me, which really
scares me. If I went back, I would be arrested or much worse as there
are people there who are tortured, beaten up or killed for being
politically active.’
Miss
Ngobeni now lives in fear of having to return to Swaziland, after her
first plea for political asylum in England in 2007 was denied in 2011.
Last
month, she was arrested and taken to an immigration detention centre
after 18 months of reporting weekly to the authorities.
However,
after pressure from the TUC and the office of Roger Godsiff, Labour MP
for Birmingham, Miss Ngobeni was released and has now been granted an
appeal by the Home Office.
Mr
Godsiff said yesterday: ‘We were very pleased solicitors were
successful in achieving a judicial review into Miss Ngobeni’s case.’
The
father of 27 children, King Mswati III was a guest at the William and
Kate wedding as well as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations last
summer.
The king’s sixth wife escaped from the royal harem last year, citing years of ‘emotional and physical abuse’ by her husband.
Culled from Daily Mail UK
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