The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small landlocked country in southern Africa bordered on three sides by South Africa and to the east by Mozambique. Roughly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, the country is mountainous with steplike plateaus descending from high through middle to low. Well-watered, it is cut by four major river systems increasingly used for the irrigation of sugar, cotton, and citrus cultivation.

In 2000, its population was estimated at 925,000, but there are certainly as many Swazis living in South Africa. The bulk live in the KwaZulu and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa, sections of which formed part of the larger nineteenth-century Swazi state and which form the basis of a current Swazi land claim against South Africa. Swaziland also claims most of Mozambique's southern province up to its capital, Maputo. These land claims are sources of occasional tension between Swaziland and...