Swazi ‘stuntman’ upsets eSwatini’s cops

Police from eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) are apparently so disturbed by a young “stuntman” from the town of Manzini that they have warned him to quit or face possible arrest.

They claim his “nerve-wrecking” stunts are likely to either kill him or the country’s motorists in South Africa’s neighbouring country.

The young man is named as Shafee Vino from Manzini, who has staged at least two daring stunts, which the local newspaper, the Swazi Observer, claims had “the potential of causing nasty traffic accidents that could have claimed hundreds of lives”.

However, his comments, as well as the clips themselves, suggest they were staged, though they are clearly still very dangerous.

In the first stunt he lets a bus drive over him along a busy road, and in the second he jumps over a speeding car.

He prefaces each of his stunts with a catch-phrase, the first being “you got to pay the cost to be the boss”.

Watch the stunts below:

https://youtu.be/ObJh8SpcafA

They report that Vino is in his twenties and a former soccer soccer. He told the paper he does the stunts to promote his brand, and that they are done in a controlled way.

“The videos are entirely genuine. There is some editing that goes into them before we upload them on social media but 80 per cent of it is what I actually do. I work with Semi-tone Records in Manzini and we shoot videos so this is just a way of marketing the brand and showing what we do,” the Observer quoted him as saying.

The police’s Khulani Mamba warned Vino his stunts were “going to pollute the nation” because children might attempt to emulate him.

Mamba said: “On social media we have children who would want to emulate the guy and think it is possible to do what he is seen doing in the videos and that won’t end well. Parents have already raised concerns over the video and we want to warn the man to refrain from what he is doing before he gets himself in trouble with the law.”

He went on: “Word has it that he is in South Africa but we gathered that he is a Swazi. The surroundings and the vehicles he does his stunts on prove that indeed the videos were shot in our local roads. We want to send a strong warning to him against his acts or the law will take its course.”