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Monday 15 September 2008

SWAZI PRESS CENSORSHIP CLAIM

This is the story of the disappearing comment article. First you see it, now you don’t.


And now Swaziland’s Times Sunday newspaper is being accused of censorship.


The article in question was written by Musa Hlophe who writes a weekly column in the Times Sunday. His article yesterday (14 September 2008) called Political Triumphs or the Triumph of Politics? appeared on the Times Sunday website and by this morning it was gone.


Hlophe, who is coordinator of the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO), wrote about the elections that are taking place in Swaziland next Friday.


In part he wrote, ‘Let us not be under any illusion, under this tinkhundla system your opinion on how the country should be governed, and who should govern it, counts for nothing. Your vote is for an MP that has no say in who is in government or what the policies of that government should be.



‘That is the reserve of His Majesty and his advisors. This is another triumph of politics over democracy.’


The article attracted some comments from readers, some hostile to Hlophe’s view: some not.


But some people think the article may have been too outspoken. In Swaziland you do not criticise King Mswati III and Hlophe was doing just that.


Today the article is no longer on the website. Some people, including the SCCCO, are accusing the Times Sunday of censorship.


I’m not so sure. I wrote on 7 August 2008, when commenting on the Times of Swaziland website that I had noticed that some articles that appeared on the website on Sunday had disappeared by Monday. I suspect this is because of bandwidth problems on the site – not everything can be kept in the site’s archives.


I don’t know this for a fact, but it is a possibility. I know people at the Times Sunday read this blog so maybe someone there can tell us what’s going on.


Meanwhile, for those who missed the article and are wondering what all the fuss is about, here it is in full.


Political Triumphs or the Triumph of Politics?

> As I write this we are hearing that the long ‘quiet diplomacy’ of
> South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has produced a settlement in the
> ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe. Of course, in the strange world of the
> southern african politician, an economy that is running inflation at
> millions of percent, is not in crisis, an election process that has
> ripped up African Union and SADC guidelines on elections and common
> sense to manipulate a result to keep Mugabe in power is not in crisis
> and a society that tolerates political killings and violence including
> rape to intimidate opposition supporters, is not a crisis. This
> leaves us with the question - what does it take for you to call a
> situation a crisis?
>
> Political, rather than legal theory shows that a state is sovereign
> when it is recognised as sovereign by other states and when it can
> control the monopoly on violence within the country. Mugabe made sure
> through his manipulation of Zimbabwe’s security forces and the use of
> violent repressive tactics by his party, ZANU-PF, that he retained the
> monopoly on violence, especially when it is directed towards political
> ends. These are the only terms that one can conceive that Zimbabwe is
> not in crisis. The ruling elite retains its ability to dominate and
> control the country and its people through violence, the threat of
> violence and the violent suppression of resistance. It is a brutally
> effective strategy that rips up the idea of the social contract where
> the leaders of a country are part of a broader agreement that they
> rule with the consent of the people.
>
> It is often said that there cannot be humanitarian solutions to
> humanitarian crises. It is also probably true that there cannot be
> effective legal responses to crises of legitimacy but that cannot mean
> that the only game in town is politics. I have said before that it is
> dangerous to leave politics to the politicians, we, the people must
> speak, we must stand up and make our voice, the voice of common sense
> in its truest and most democratic form, speak. Democracy is government
> of the people, by the people, for the people, not the politicians.
>
> Governments of National Unity are a triumph of politics over the
> people, and their common sense. This is where this dangerous, short
> sighted idea of a government of national unity (GNU) panders to the
> politically aware who are concerned about the control of the levers of
> power rather than representing the will of the people and respecting
> the diversity of views within it. Seven months into the GNU in
> Kenya, we still see politically motivated brutality on the streets of
> Nairobi, we see the loser of the election remaining as President and
> head of state and appointing the winner of the election as Prime
> Minister with undefined executive powers. We see the stunted Truth
> and Reconciliation Commission and other Commissions that are never
> going to get to the real causes of the crisis because the people who
> appointed them are the people that the Commissions must investigate.
> We see the will of the people ignored by the political elite and the
> important role of the opposition parties as the expressed will of the
> minorities and as a check and balance on power, left behind. A
> triumph of politics over democracy.
>
> Zimbabwe’s economic crisis stems not from the economic sanctions
> imposed by the west, (they were directed at less than 100 people
> within the country) but by the politicians thinking that they can
> order the printing of more monetary notes when there aren’t enough to
> buy what they want. This attempt by politics to triumph over
> economics was always doomed to failure.
>
> On Thursday, the day before the, still secret, deal was announced,
> there were credible reports of ZANU-PF activists beating and raping
> opposition supporters. These are not the actions of democrats. ZANU-
> PF are not democratic - they are politicians who have gained power
> through the barrel of the gun and cannot envisage that power can be
> taken from them in any other way. Mugabe said so before the June 29
> run-off, his words were ‘how can a cross on a piece of paper mean more
> than a rifle?’. While we respect Comrade Mugabe’s proud history as
> the scourge of the colonialists, however we must acknowledge that he
> has squandered his fine reputation by acting in exactly the same ways
> as his colonialist oppressors did. The takeover of the white farms
> had nothing to do with giving back the land to Zimabweans, as his high
> flown and emotionally charged rhetoric states. Farms were selected
> for ‘repatriation’ by those who stopped paying bribes to ZANU-PF. The
> fact that the farms were then given to party leaders who couldn’t farm
> is one of the great tradgedies of Zimbabwe. And so we witness the
> triumph of politics over biology. The farms can be barren and the
> people can starve so long as those farms are owned by the powerful.
>
> Back at home, in Swaziland, this week is, of course, elections week.
> Let us not be under any illusion, under this tinkhundla system your
> opinion on how the country should be governed, and who should govern
> it, counts for nothing. Your vote is for an MP that has no say in who
> is in government nor what the policies of that government should be.
> That is the reserve of His Majesty and his advisors. This is another
> triumph of politics over democracy.
>
> We saw on Wednesday the belated arrival of the SADC elections
> observation advance team. By their own standards, they are supposed
> to be in country at least fifteen days before the elections but like
> our Elections Commission they will be trying to do too little, too
> late. In explaining their lateness the observers stated that Swazi
> Elections and Boundaries Commission had not invited them for the
> nominations and the primary elections. We all know the reasons why.
> The nominations are the arenas where the real work of the Tinkhundla
> system is carried out. When the elections and boundaries staff
> collude with the local chief to ensure that certain people are, as our
> constitution states, ‘invited to stand’ and more importantly for the
> tinkhudla system not ‘invited to stand’. Many people were not
> recognised for nomination if their face didn’t fit. We know that there
> must be between 4 and 10 candidates for each chiefdom but we don’t
> know the criteria that the elections officials use to decide how many
> people should be invited to stand. This system is corruptible and it
> is corrupt. The Commonwealth Elections Observation Team got it right
> in 2003 when they said that it was of no consequence if the elections
> were free or fair since they were not credible. These elections and
> this Constitution do not allow for change, they do not allow for
> development.
>
> And as in Kenya and Zimbabwe so it is in Swaziland, elections now mean
> nothing, those in power stay there in spite of the will of the people.
> Nothing changes. In George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ the final image of
> government was as a boot stamping on a human face, forever. When you
> can’t change your government that is the system that you get. The
> triumph of politics but by no means a political triumph.

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