It used to be in Swaziland that every time King Mswati III returned from a foreign trip he would hold a media conference and journalists would be able to ask him questions.
More recently the rules of the game have changed. The conference still goes ahead but the media are warned in advance that they can’t ask the king questions about this or that.
And so it happened again this week. The King came back from a trip to the Middle East (he had met up with his eight wives who went on a four million US dollar shopping trip) but came home without them.
On his return to Swaziland the Swazi media were ‘muzzled’ (to use the words of the Times of Swaziland) from asking him questions.
King Mswati is embroiled in all kinds of controversy at the moment. With only a couple of weeks to go until the 40/40 celebrations to mark his 40th birthday and the 40th anniversary of Swaziland’s independence, the Swazi and international media have been carrying highly critical articles about the event, and more generally, in the case of the foreign press, about Swaziland.
Much of this has been about the enormous sums of money being spent on the 40/40 celebrations. As well as the Queens’ shopping trip, 20 top of the range BMW cars have been bought and another 19 have been rented for the birthday bash.
There is also an outcry about the voting that took place in Swaziland last weekend which had to be postponed half way through election day because of numerous irregularities. We still aren’t clear who has won and who hasn’t. I suspect the courts are going to be busy for weeks to come on this one.
On top of this there is King Mswati’s role in ‘mediations’ to solve the Zimbabwe election crisis.
In a democracy the head of state (i.e the King) would be questioned by the media on these controversies.
But, of course, Swaziland is not a democracy and King Mswati III is an autonomous monarch. He can do what he likes.
Yesterday (29 August 2008) the Times of Swaziland in an editorial comment condemned the censorship, but blamed the Swazi Government for causing the problem. The newspaper seemed to forget that if the King wanted to be questioned, he would allow it.
The newspaper wrote, ‘Once again somebody has decided to teach the media how to go about doing its job and barred it from posing questions to His Majesty the King on matters affecting his people.
‘This not being the first time, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Mathendele Dlamini together with officials from the King’s Office, may have thought they were doing the king a great favour when in fact they continued to embarrass him by suggesting he was incapable of addressing matters to do with his own country.
‘The king is currently the chairman of Troika in the SADC region, a body responsible for resolving conflict. The foreign minister’s action suggests the king is incapable of addressing local issues and by extension implying the same of matters involving other countries.
Not only does this action violate the constitution and the public’s right to information, but it goes a long way to portray the king as a dictator in the eyes of the watchful international community.
‘The king has travelled the world, addressed international gatherings and has needed no protection from foreign media. He is much wiser than the minister to believe we pose any threat.
‘When will the minister and company realise that His Majesty is perfectly capable of speaking for himself?
‘When will they realise that they are hurting the king even more by muzzling the press? Such attempts have been made in the past and we are grateful to His Majesty who has allowed us to proceed with questions. He realises fully that this is the only opportunity the media gets to interact with him, while foreign media is continuously given the red carpet treatment, only to taint the country’s image once they get back home.
‘This has got to stop.
‘To think that we are about to celebrate 40 years of independence and the king’s 40th birthday, while others are hell-bent on taking us back to the colonial era and making him look 18, is an insult to the intelligence of the king, the media and the public we all serve.’
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