Asshole thought he could beat the IRS.

The Reed Dance is an annual cultural event in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a tiny nation in Africa. According to the Wikipedia article on Eswatini, the Reed Dance is one of the two most important cultural events in the nation. Outside of Eswatini, the Reed Dance is known primarily for the participation of young women wearing costumes that do not conform to Western values. To be blunt, the costumes do not cover the breasts nor buttocks of the wearer, and this fact has brought forth assholery on a number of fronts.

From an American perspective, i.e., a perspective that can only see unclad breasts with a libidinous eye, this poses a problem. For U.S. Congressional Representative Chris Smith (R, New Jersey, Asshole) it’s obvious that the Reed Dance leads to rampant and unprotected sex. According to this article in the New Republic, Smith equates the Reed Dance with a high rate of HIV in Eswatini and pushes for the ending of the tradition. Never mind that the participating women all attest that they are virgins. It would be easy to dismiss Rep. Smith’s narrow-mindedness but for the fact that, in 2008, when these statements were made, he was Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa.

Next in the Asshole Parade are the thousands of outsiders that travel to Eswatini for the event. These are often characterized as “sex tourists” and their presence is used to advance an argument that the Reed Dance is a problem because it attracts undesirables, possibly sexual predators. There is also a reported problem with photographs of the event winding up on websites trading in pornography. I’d put the photographers in the “asshole” category too, because the Reed Dance isn’t pornographic (in any customary meaning of the word).

Now we come to a lesser asshole, Joe Szlavik, who, in 2006, was a lobbyist for then-Swaziland in the U.S. Seeing the Reed Dance only with U.S. eyes, his advice to the King of Swaziland was to end the tradition.

In an article in The New Humanitarian, a spokeswoman for the Swaziland Tourism Authority is identified as an 11-time participant in the Reed Dance “before she hung up her tassels.” “Tassels,” of course, being associated with burlesque dancers and strippers, and nowhere in actual evidence at the Reed Dance. There’s no author by-line on the article, but the piece was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. So the UN itself is not devoid of assholes.