The Swazis are a proud but peaceful people with happy, easy-going and often humorous personalities who despite progress in their society towards modernization, mostly still adhere to the traditional way of life.

In more recent decades, the prosperity of the Swazi people has been challenged by the spread of poverty, which combined with a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS has worn the fabric of Swazi society thin and led to a virtual collapse of the Swazi extended family system, leaving many orphans to fend for themselves. In many situations, children drop out of school after the death of parents, they sacrifice school fees to pay medical costs of ill relatives, and girls are sometimes withdrawn from school to care for ill parents. This plight of the Swazi people has been worsened by severe food shortages caused by drought. Without intervention, Swaziland and its people continue on a path that will see the entire Swazi population extinct by 2050.