After decades as a British protectorate, Swaziland formally regained independence on September 6, 1968. King Sobhuza II, who had reigned since 1921, became head of state under a Westminster-style constitution, though he would later suspend it in 1973 to rule by decree, cementing one of Africa's last absolute monarchies.
Sobhuza II had spent nearly five decades navigating British colonial rule with a mixture of patience and quiet resistance, buying back tribal lands piece by piece and sending petitions to London rather than staging armed rebellion. When independence finally came in 1968, it was less a rupture than a negotiated handover, one of the more peaceful transitions of the African decolonization wave.
The new constitution created a parliamentary system, but it never sat easily with Swazi traditions of monarchical authority. Within five years Sobhuza suspended it entirely, banning political parties and ruling directly — a move that drew little international outcry compared to upheavals elsewhere on the continent.
Today the country, renamed Eswatini in 2018, remains one of the world's last absolute monarchies, its September 6 independence anniversary celebrated even as debates over democratic reform persist.