colonial secretary, Lord Elgin, in February 1908. They got little or no redress on the land issue, apart from a disputed, and subsequently dishonoured, promise that they would be able to buy back the crown land. Three years after the return of the deputation, Labotsibeni and Malunge became, with the consent of Coryndon, the prime movers behind a national fund to buy back land—a move that seems to have drawn a little of the bitterness from the issue. The establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, and the provision in the schedule attached to the act for the future incorporation of Swaziland and the other high commission territories in the union, prompted Labotsibeni and Malunge to take a greater interest than they had done previously in the affairs of South Africa, where they had many subjects. Labotsibeni was reported in 1914 as saying that ‘as Swaziland would no doubt enter the Union at some future date she was in sympathy with any efforts tending towards the betterment of the conditions under which Union natives live, and for this reason her son Malunge had become a member of the Native Congress’ (Macmillan, 294–5). Prince Malunge attended the conference that was held by the South African Natives National Congress in Kimberley in February 1914 to discuss the response to the Land Act, and was treated as the most distinguished delegate. He and Labotsibeni were close to two of the prime movers in the founding of the congress, the lawyers Pixley Seme and Richard Msimang, and provided the bulk of the funds, about £3000, which were required for the establishment in 1912 of its official newspaper, Abantu-Batho, whose first editor, Cleopas Kunene, had been secretary and interpreter to Labotsibeni. Malunge's sudden death in January 1915 was a great blow to his mother and the Swazi nation, and was seen as a loss to the black people of South Africa as a whole. Labotsibeni's last major contribution as queen regent was her insistence, in spite of some opposition, that Mona, the heir to the throne, should receive the best education then available to a black person in southern Africa. After primary education at the Swazi National School at Zombodze he was sent in 1916 to Lovedale, a school run by the United Free Church of Scotland at Alice in the Cape, which he attended for three years. In 1919 she decided that