The Swaziland Government has reportedly ordered all tertiary colleges and the university in the kingdom to be closed indefinitely, following demonstrations and class boycotts by students.
The recently-formed Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) has been organising students across the kingdom to protest against the government.
Students have specific demands about the level of scholarships they receive and a move by the government to cut back on scholarships.
They also have more general demands calling for democracy in Swaziland which is ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
In a press statement earlier this week SNUS made no secret of its wishes to see the government overthrown. This has put students on a collision course with other ‘progressive’ groups in the kingdom that want democratic reform but fall short of calling for government overthrow.
Today (2 February 2010), students marched for the second day in what eyewitnesses call ‘unprecedented’ numbers. They hoped to deliver a petition to Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister.
Every tertiary institution in Swaziland was represented at the march, but the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported that yesterday many students from Nazarene college did not join the march because of fear of victimisation by their school.
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