News from: Friday September 12, 2003

Swaziland's King Mswati III selected bride number 12, less than a week after he picked his 11th bride from thousands of young Swazi maidens. Mswati's 12th bride was identified as 18-year-old Nomonde Fihla, who was crowned the first princess in the Miss Swaziland 2003 pageant. In an interview at the time, she told a magazine she did not believe in polygamy.

Fihla was one of thousands of maidens who attended this year's annual reed dance ceremony, when the king, 35, chooses a bride.

In the traditional ceremony, the young women dressed in little more than beads and traditional skirts dance before the king to impress him. Mswati is Africa's last absolute monarch. He has resisted recent pressure from his subjects to introduce democratic reforms.