By Fienie Grobler
Swazi Queen Sibonelo Mngomezulu takes on her kingdom's record-high Aids rates with as much passion as she fights to bring women out of men's shadows in Africa's last absolute monarchy.
Married to polygamist King Mswati III for nearly two decades, the so-called "Queen of Firsts" has broken the mould many times, completing a law degree, speaking out against polygamy, producing her own television show and setting up the first Aids charities.
"It was unheard of, in fact, it was considered a bit outrageous," she said of her first charity work in 1992.
"But I was determined and everyone grew accustomed to it. It happens every time I do something new . . . it is initially scorned upon, and then people start to follow," she told AFP in an interview from her royal palace outside Mbabane.
Also known by her clan name Inkhosikati LaMbikiza, or Queen LaMbikiza, she runs two Aids organisations, Lusito (siSwati for "help"), which pays for orphans to go to school and Tisite ("help yourself") that helps careworkers.
"I saw a lot of suffering among children and I just thought we should try and devise a strategy to help them," Mngomezulu said from the huge Nkoyoyo Palace towering over the mountain kingdom from a green hilltop.
The striking Mngomezulu, 35, is a picture of modernity as she sits beneath a life-size portrait of King Mswati in his traditional garb on a background of rolling mountains.
Dressed in a bright red chiffon dress with a plunging neckline and shiny red high heels, her red hair extensions an elegant stack on her head, her nails varnished, Mngomezulu concurs that women's status in Swaziland as second-class citizens may well be behind the kingdom's sky-high Aids rate.
"It can, to a great degree, be one of the reasons for our high Aids rate," she acknowledged, but added: "Those problems arise in the more traditional families.
"We've got a new draft constitution which gives equal rights to women.
"We had to do a lot of soliciting, we had to make quite a lot of noise, it didn't come easy.
"So soon it will not be legal anymore to get a woman in a position of submission. It might still be practised but it will be up to the woman to make sure her rights are enforced."
Mngomezulu, who was chosen as a teenager as the first of Mswati's 11 wives, said she feels strongly about women taking some responsibility for their lives.
"When women are too timid to come out and say no, the man will do what he wants."
That view is shared by health workers in Swaziland, a mountainous kingdom wedged between South Africa and Mozambique which is grappling with the world's highest Aids infection rate at 38.8%, according to the UN figures.
An estimated 20 000 people contract full-blown Aids every year and some 17 000 died of Aids in 2003.
Some 65 000 children have been orphaned by Aids in the kingdom with a population of one million, and that figure is set to nearly double by 2010.
"We are in deep trouble," national Aids director Derek von Wissell said in an interview. "And we don't foresee a flattening soon."
In eastern Swaziland, the most affected region in the country, health workers say a major factor in the pandemic is the marginalisation of Swazi women who are not given the option to negotiate sex.
Nurse Anna-Maria Dlamini cites the example of an HIV positive 41-year-old woman who fell pregnant while knowing her status but was not able to demand that her husband use a condom.
Now her six-week-old baby boy cannot be fed properly due to her poverty and illness, and is highly likely to be infected himself.
"In Swaziland, there is a saying: 'Yewela make'. It is what a man says to a woman when he wants sex. It means 'I'm ready, come here' without asking the woman, are you okay?
"The word of the Swazi man is final," Dlamini said.