MANSIONS ON SWAZI NATION LAND

HHELEHHELE – Well-heeled Swazis have taken to building double-storey houses on Swazi Nation Land (SNL) in far-flung areas where there is no security of land tenure.
A resident’s stay in the rural areas is guaranteed by a chief.

It effectively means a resident must always strive to be in the good books of the traditional leader.
This is because the powers to evict a resident from SNL are vested with him (chief) and his inner council, which is chosen by him (chief).
It is not common though, for the current chiefs, especially the young ones, to evict their subjects.

They usually order dissidents to pay a fine in the form of a cow or some money for flouting community procedure.
A court can intervene where the process to evict the resident has not been followed. In most cases, disputes on SNL arise when another person shows up to claim ownership of the land on which a home was built.
This has been happening in the peri-urban areas, especially in Mpolonjeni (Mbabane).

Some of the double-storey houses built on rural land are so beautiful and classy that they can outclass or compete for prestige with the mansions in the high-class suburbs of Beverly Hills, Dalriach, Thembelihle in Mbabane and Madonsa and Coates Valley in Manzini. Beautiful double-storey houses are found in Ngculwini, Siphofaneni, Mpolonjeni (Mbabane) and other rural areas across the country. These places are under the traditional leadership of chiefs.
In Ngculwini, owners of the double- storey houses were at work when the Times SUNDAY team visited the place on Thursday.

At one homestead, a 25-year-old member of the family said architects were hired to oversee the projects.
“My father didn’t just hire a non-qualified builder but engaged a construction company to build the home,” he said, declining to reveal his name because he had not been authorised by his father to speak about the home to the media.
A woman aged 19 said her father had also engaged qualified builders to construct the double-storey house because he had bought an expensive design that required skilled architects to embark on the project.

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