The fourteenth of November marks the anniversary of the time
Swaziland soldiers invaded the University of Swaziland and according to
independent witnesses beat students with sickening brutality.
It happened in 1990 and each year on or about this day
students and others commemorate the events.
Dr. Joshua Mzizi, a theology lecturer at UNISWA at the time
(and now deceased), called the event which became known as Black Wednesday a
‘sceptic sore’ in the history of UNISWA. In an account that appears in the book
Religion
and Politics in Swaziland he recounts that ‘a combined army of
young soldiers and the police were ordered to flog students at the Kwaluseni
campus.
‘The students were beaten under the pretext that they had
refused to vacate the campus after the Senate had ordered that it be closed.’
Students had begun boycotting classes on 12 November in
protest of a lack of faculty lecturers, poor food conditions, and the
suspension of a popular young sociology lecturer for promoting democracy in
Swaziland, according
to
another eyewitness, Michael Prosser, a professor from the United
States who was working at UNISWA.
In Mzizi’s account, ‘A great number of students had
assembled in the library where they thought no one in their right senses would
disturb their peace. But their action was perceived as potentially volatile;
hence the safety of the library and the entire campus could not be assured.’
Mzizi writes one version of events was that students
threatened to burn the library down but another was that they were peaceful and
non-threatening.
Mzizi personally witnessed events. He wrote, ‘The brutality
of the armed forces was sickening to say the least. There was blood and torn
limbs, all inflicted on defenceless and fleeing students.
‘Students were chased from the library via the front of the
administration building to the main car park where another bunch of
blood-thirsty soldiers kicked them with boots, batons and guns to escort them
to the gate.’
Prosser also witnessed brutality He
wrote
an account on his own webpage, ‘The young soldiers broke into the
library and the student hostels, dragging students out, beating both men and
women with their night sticks on their arms and legs, and forcing them to run a
gauntlet toward the front gate while the soldiers gave them sharp blows.
‘The soldiers taunted the students: “We’ll beat the English
out of you.” They were especially vicious toward the women. The soldiers had
been stationed that day at the high school next door to the campus and drank
lots of beer before they attacked the campus, making them even more violent
than otherwise so likely.
‘A neighbor warned us that at 10pm, soldiers would search
our houses and arrest any students found there or on campus. Two Canadian
families and I, in a caravan of three autos, took 11 frightened Swazi students
in the three cars to the front gate to take them to safety.
‘With a gun pointed at the first driver’s cheek, he got
permission from the guard to leave the campus with the students. In the
swirling rain, lightening, and thunderstorm, we took the students to safe
shelters. When we returned to campus late in the evening, two soldiers were
posted all night in the back and in the front of our houses.
‘With some students, I drove to the nearby hospital where more
than 120 students had received emergency treatment. We visited more than a
dozen badly injured students. We learned that soldiers possibly had injured as
many as 300-400 and had killed perhaps as many as two-four students.’
In 1999 the Inter Press Service (IPS) looked back at the
events. It called the student action a ‘rebellion’ that ‘became a seminal event that
signalled a new generation’s political consciousness’. It was, IPS said, ‘a
dawning political awareness born from a confluence of historical forces then
sweeping the world and the Southern African region’.
The IPS report quoted Manzini lawyer Lindiwe Khumalo-Matse, a university student
at the time, saying, ‘The reason why soldiers were called in was because
government saw our protest as a political uprising.’
In
1990, one of the Swazi Government’s most draconian measures, a 60-Day Detention
Law, was still in force, permitting authorities to lock up anyone they saw as a
threat to public order. All political protestors were designated as such threats.
The
violence that ensued after soldiers swept through campus has been a sensitive
subject with government ever since. A commission of enquiry had its report
secreted away for years, with a bowdlerized version finally released to the
public in 1997.
People
in Swaziland were shocked by the brutality. Particularly offensive was one
newspaper photo depicting a young woman carried out of the library between
soldiers ‘like a slaughtered pig’, according to a letter writer to the Times of Swaziland.
The
Times
Higher Education Supplement, a newspaper in the UK, later
reported, ‘In the ensuing melee several students were crippled for life,
hundreds injured and one woman successfully sued the government for an
out-of-court settlement of E225,000 for the loss of an eye.’
Mzizi wrote, ‘The painful part is that the children of the
nation were brutally beaten by the security forces, they very people who were
supposed to protect them.’
He added, ‘Since we know that security forces are under the
state, we still wonder who exactly ordered them to pounce on defenceless
students.’
Mzizi concluded, ‘The memories of 14 November 1990 will never
be wiped away. They will linger on until Domesday.’
See also
Black Wednesday at Swaziland University
