STUDENTS burnt a portrait of Swaziland’s absolutist monarch King Mswati III on Sunday night as pro-democracy demonstrations showed no sign of subsiding.

They gathered at the Luyengo campus of the University of Eswatini — the new name for the landlocked southern African nation — demanding Mswati’s abdication.

A picture of the monarch was set alight to loud cheers as students danced around the fire, singing songs and raising slogans calling for freedom.