Tag Archives: Swaziland

W/Cup Qualifier: Oliseh Surprised Me With Choice Of Players – Swaziland Coach

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Swaziland’s national football team Coach, Harris Bulunga, said that Super Eagles’ Coach, Sunday Oliseh’s choice of players upset his game plan in a World Cup qualifying match against Nigeria.
Bulunga made the remark after the Super Eagles beat Swaziland 2-0 in the match played at the Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium in Port Harcourt.
Moses Simon scored Nigeria’s first goal in the 51st minute while Defender, Efe Ambrose, nodded in the second goal in the 84th minute.
According to Bulunga, we expected Oliseh to field Mikel Obi. We did not see him and it was a surprise to us.
“Sunday Oliseh surprised us with his tactics and choice of players. The Nigerian midfield was generally slow in the first leg in Swaziland.
“In today’s match, the Nigerian midfield was more mobile and fluid and they created more chances in the match’’, he said.
The Swazi coach said the Eagles midfield was more coordinated in the game today.’
He also tipped the Eagles to go places in the World Cup qualifying matches.
Super Eagles coach, Sunday Oliseh, said the Swazi’s did not come out to attack.
“We had to make changes during the break to open them and score’’, he said.

 

(NAN)

38 Swazi virgins going for reed dance die in tragic crash

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Not less than 38 girls and young women were killed in a crash on Friday while travelling to Swaziland’s most famous traditional festival.

 

Trucks transporting scores of young women to the traditional Umhlanga Reed Dance collided on Friday near the town of Matsapha on Swaziland’s major highway, the Times of Swaziland reported.

 

The young women and girls were travelling on the back of an open truck, the rights group said.

 

“According to inside sources, a total of 38 young girls have been pronounced dead, with more than 20 others seriously injured,” said Lucky Lukhele, spokesperson for the Swaziland Solidarity Network, an advocacy group based in neighbouring South Africa.

 

Swazi police at first refused to give any information on the accident but later disputed the death toll provided by the rights group. Only 13 people were killed in the crash, said police spokesman Khulani Mamba.

 

Cellphone images taken of the crash show the bloodied bodies of young women lying on the back of a flatbed truck.

 

The girls and young women were on their way to the Swazi king’s royal residence for the annual reed dance.

 

About 40,000 young women participate in the eight-day reed dance ceremony in which they sing and dance, usually bare-breasted, as they bring reeds to reinforce the windbreak around the royal residence. During the reed dance, the king often selects one of the young women to become one of his wives. Swaziland is polygamous and the king has more than a dozen wives.

 

“We all have heard about the dark cloud that has befallen the ‘imbali,'” said King Mswati III, using the Swati language word for flower, used to refer to the groups of women dancers.

 

Speaking Saturday at the opening of an international trade fair in Swaziland’s economic center Manzini, the king promised that the affected families would be compensated. He added that an investigation into the accident was underway.

Madagascar’s Ex-president Returns from Exile

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Former Madagascar president Marc Ravalomanana, who has been living in exile in South Africa since his ouster in 2009, returned home on Monday.

“I am here to support peace and democracy, but more urgent is the fight against poverty,” he told supporters at his home in the capital Antananarivo.

Madagascar has on several occasions blocked Ravalomanana’s return to the Indian Ocean island since his rival Andry Rajoelina seized power.

In 2012, a plane carrying him was turned back in mid-flight when he tried to return home after nearly three years in exile.

Ravalomanana first fled to Swaziland after the coup and later moved to South Africa.

The former leader was in 2010 sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with hard labour for the death of 30 opposition protesters killed by his presidential guard in February 2009.