All the more so in Swaziland, because it is one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa where the historical legitimacy of the state is not in question. It’s not a product of some colonial administrator in Lisbon or London saying “Ah, let’s put a country here and call it Nigeria.” There is no Swazi Biafra. Habitation in their territory is as old as 1770, when Ngwane III brought his people through the Lebombo Mountains to settle there (they were in the general area for centuries before). The illegitimacy of Nigeria’s state and borders was for instance often used as the explicit and implicit excuse for mass murder during Nigerian civil war.

But what if a regime that has historical legitimacy is nevertheless a despotic agent of the genocide of its own people, not through war, but through outright incompetence and misrule? A regime that despite its invented prejudices, is no victim of ongoing imperial crimes. This is a pregnant postcolonial question really.

I linked to this one on Delaware Libertarian.