During his kingship Mbandzeni granted many mining, farming, trading and administrative concessions to white settlers from Britain and the Transvaal.
During a period of concessions preceded by famine around 1877 some of the tindvunas (governors) from within Swaziland like Mshiza Maseko and Ntengu kaGama Mbokane were given permission by King Mbandzeni to relocate to farms towards the Komati River and Lubombo regions, Mshiza Maseko later settled in a place called eLuvalweni towards Nkomati River, where he was later buried.
Mbandzeni, still in command of a large Swazi army of more than 15,000 men aided the British in defeating Sekhukhune in 1879 and preventing Zulu incursion into the Transvaal during the same year.
[5] During the reign of Mbandzeni, numerous visits to his capital in Mbekelweni was made by many concessionaires and settlers who were seeking land, mining rights and other business deals.
[5] Mbandzeni and royal officials granted many overlapping concessions to the British and Dutch interests and in return were paid in either gold or cattle or other available currency or goods.
It is as a result of these that Swaziland came to be of major interest to British settlers and burghers from the Dutch republics for its potential in agriculture, mining and in general settlement.
[5] Immediately into the reign of Mbandzeni, skirmishes between the British and the Boers had begun and Britain annexed the Transvaal and made it its colony.
However the concessions Mbandzeni and Mswati earlier had granted to the settlers would be detrimental to the independence issue as they were used in the Swaziland conventions in 1884 and in 1894 with Britain reneging on its promises.
[10][11] The present border of Swaziland was decided upon in these two conventions, with Shepstone representing Swazi interests in the 1884 and Allister Miller in 1894.
[4] The border with the Portuguese territorial boundary was decided to be the Lubombo ranges for Swaziland and the MacMahon line for British Tongaland (in South Africa).
The border with the South African Republic was chosen to be the present boundary, cutting off many Swazi homes including royal villages such as Mjindini, Mekemeke, among others.
As a result many Swazis remain residents of South Africa especially in Mpumalanga province, a number bigger than the population of Swaziland proper.