The King of Eswatini has formed another committee to negotiate with South Africa to surrender back land which was taken from his kingdom during the colonial era by Afrikaner farmers who negotiated leases that were later turned upside down.

King Mswati III announced the new 15 members of the Border Restoration Committee (BRC) on Monday, and it is mainly made up of royal family members and monarchists.

The committee will be in office for five years, and it is not a new one, as every five years, new members are appointed despite not moving an inch to reclaim the land they say belongs to the Kingdom.

The chairperson of the committee is Chief Mgebiseni Dlamini, a distant relative of King Mswati III who rules the kingdom with an iron fist.

According to the kingdom, all parts of the present day Mpumalanga province (the former Eastern Transvaal) historically belong to it and the present-day borders were set up as a meanto control an outbreak of foot and mouth in the 70s and 80s. The kingdom is also claiming some parts of Gauteng as it claims that Springs near Johannesburg belongs to it.

Furthermore, the kingdom claims parts of the present day KwaZulu-Natal as it claims that the original border between itself and the Zulu kingdom is the Pongola river, meaning that the agricultural town of Pongola is on its soil. It also claims the towns of Ingwavuma and Kosi Bay, arguing that it was its passage to the Indian Ocean where it collected sea water for its ancient rituals like Incwala.

In 1982, the apartheid government signed a pact with Eswatini and agreed to cede parts of Ingwavuma, but that was thwarted when the late Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi took the matter to court, and the agreement was set aside. To cement its claim over the territory, the former KwaZulu government built the Machobeni royal palace and hosted some Zulu cultural events there.