Swaziland has the world's highest HIV rates and lowest life expectancy. The economy is collapsing so fast even pensions have been stopped while poverty is so extreme people have resorted to eating cow dung.
Such is the King's arrogance and incompetence, his country is probably closer than any other in sub-Saharan Africa to the sort of uprising we have seen sweeping the north of the continent this year.
'We are in meltdown,' said Bheki Makhubu, editor of The Nation newspaper. 'It's a terrible pity. There is a huge disconnect between the King and his people. He is on another planet.'
Visiting the kingdom, it appears outwardly calm. The shops seem prosperous, the streets spotlessly tidy and there are none of the wretched townships that scar neighbouring states.
The King, the Queen, one of his wives and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace
King Mswati III of Swaziland and one of his wives, Inkhosikati Lahoala attends the wedding ceremony of Lesotho King Letsie III and his new wife Karabo Motsoeneng in 1996
We had just passed impala grazing in the bush and gangs of turkey scavenging for food beside the road. All around was the buzz of excitement as families headed into a music festival at Simunye Country Club.
Children, their faces painted in Spiderman patterns and wearing feather-rimmed tiaras, laughed as they ran around the funfair. Students sat in circles, taking swigs from cans of beer.
Everywhere people were smartly dressed, smiling and friendly. It felt timeless, the mood one of gentle enjoyment. It was difficult to believe we were in a country on the edge of revolt against the last absolute monarch in Africa.
For such peaceful scenes are no longer the typical image of this tiny nation that was, for so many years, such an oasis of stability surrounded by civil war, unrest and apartheid that it styled itself 'the Switzerland of Africa'.
Instead the middle-aged monarch — famed around the world for his leopardskin loincloths, his 13 wives and traditional ceremonies at which thousands of bare-breasted teenage virgins vie for his attention — rules over a land in turmoil.
The British-educated King Mswati III seems increasingly like a throwback to a medieval monarch, a profligate potentate trying — and failing — to keep the modern world at bay like an African Canute.
He clings onto antiquated traditions that promote rampant promiscuity in a land ripped apart by Aids, where elderly princes take child brides under the cloak of culture, corruption is rife and fawning courtiers feud for favours as their country falls apart.
Swaziland is classified as a middle-income country. When I remarked to one activist that the nation was poor, he reprimanded me. 'We are not a poor country — just badly run,' he said. 'I have been to Togo and Ethiopia and seen really poor countries.'
But Swaziland is effectively bankrupt. Already, two-thirds of its people live beneath the poverty line and 40 per cent are unemployed.
Now state spending has been slashed, with street lights switched off, schools closed, benefits stopped, university places cut, courts in chaos, prisoners' food reduced and even the national football team facing withdrawal from the World Cup.
Incredibly, one in four of those people I passed on the Swazi streets is HIV positive. And these are the official levels — it may be even worse: tests carried out on pregnant women revealed infection rates of 41 per cent, while more than half of factory workers were found to have the virus.
As a result, nearly one-third of children are orphaned and life expectancy has crashed from 60 to just 33 — which, as one person pointed out, made me an old man there.
Everyone you talk to, whatever their age, has lost scores of friends and family to the scourge, and funerals, with their all-night vigils, are commonplace.
Such shocking statistics make the King's polygamy, promiscuity and profligacy seem lethally irresponsible. Little wonder one of the world's oldest monarchies is fighting for survival.
'Sometimes I wish I had a bomb and I would throw it at the King,' said one of the young organisers of protests against him.
'We can't go on living like this. It hurts so much to see the King wasting all our money while we have no work.'
King Mswati ascended the throne 25 years ago straight after leaving Sherborne, the Dorset public school. He was an unexpected choice to succeed his father, the revered Sobhuza II, who had reigned for nearly 83 years — the longest documented rule of any monarch in world history — and oversaw the country's independence from Britain in 1968.
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