Eswatini’s king professed to have a bold plan for a thriving economic zone. ICIJ uncovered two phantom gold refineries channeling millions of dollars to Dubai through it.

Against a backdrop of rolling hills and sugar cane fields, a generous stretch of cleared land borders the small industrial town of Matsapha in central Eswatini, a tiny landlocked African country between South Africa and Mozambique.

Musa Motsa, a 51-year-old farmworker and father of six, grew up on this land. He and his family used to grow cabbage and other crops here and collected water from a nearby spring. But in 2012, they were forcibly removed — along with around 180 other people — to make room for a government-sanctioned “special economic zone,” or SEZ, called the Royal Science and Technology Park.

The “brainchild” of Eswatini’s king, Mswati III, and his “insatiable desire to help stimulate economic growth,” as one press release put it, the SEZ was meant to be an oasis for new business. Instead, grass and weeds are slowly reclaiming vacant plots. Wide, empty boulevards go nowhere, lined with streetlights that aren’t in operation. One lone building — a multistory government office complex — stands in a surreal ghost land of nearly 400 acres.

Read more: icij.org

Photo: icij.org