Ben Sheppard -
At the main campus entrance, a large concrete sign welcomes students and visitors to “The University of...” followed by a blank space.
After Swaziland changed its name earlier this year to eSwatini, the nine letters spelling out the old name of the country were removed from the university sign, and new letters have not yet arrived.
“We are still waiting,” said a security guard at the gate.
On the other side of the road, Banele Syabonga, 25, contemplated his country’s sudden change of name in April, which took many citizens by surprise.
“I like the new name — it is more African,” Syabonga, who is unemployed, said.
“Swaziland was the British name. Now we have our own,” he said.
In April, King Mswati III — one of the world’s last absolute rulers — marked 50 years since his country’s independence from British colonial rule by announcing that it would now be known as eSwatini (“land of the Swazis”).
The monarch’s decision revealed much about his autocratic rule.
Six weeks after the king’s pronouncement, the country’s representative informed the United Nations headquarters in New York, and the UN soon adopted the new nomenclature.
Regional bodies, including the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have also quickly changed to eSwatini — though they sometimes swap between names in the same statement.
The adjustment has taken some getting used to inside eSwatini, a landlocked nation of just 1.3 million residents between South Africa and Mozambique.
It is “Swaziland” on the banknotes, but the central bank now uses “eSwatini”, while police stations are gradually changing their signs.
Unlike many countries, such as Zimbabwe — called Southern Rhodesia under British rule — Swaziland did not change its name when it became independent in 1968.
“African countries, on getting independence, reverted to their ancient names before they were colonised,” the king said when he announced the change, having previously complained that Swaziland was often confused with Switzerland.
But the king’s claim that eSwatini was Swaziland’s old “authentic” name is fiercely disputed.
“There is disagreement over the pre-colonial name — many say it was actually ‘Ngwane’,” Thulani Maseko, an activist and lawyer who is challenging the name change in court, said in the capital Mbabane.
“The name of your country is your identity, so it should not be changed by just one person issuing a royal command,” he said. — AFP
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