HELP IS ON THE WAY

Orphans in need of saving; a sick teenager; school students who have to chop pencils in three parts so they can all have something to write with.

What do these people have in common? They are all subjects of recent news reports in the foreign press. They are just some of the increasing number of reports being published across the world that portray Swaziland and its people as helpless and needy.

If you look at these reports in a certain light you see heart-warming accounts of people who are well off and comfortable who wish to help people who are less fortunate than themselves.

I don’t want to be critical of caring people, but there is another side to these reports that is a bit disturbing.

Very little gets written about Swaziland in the foreign press. This is even more so when you look at countries outside the continent of Africa. Because of this people know very little about the kingdom. What little they do know they learn through the media.

For example, hardly anything about Swaziland appears in newspapers in Britain, even though Swaziland has a close historic link with the country (mostly, it has to be said, because Britain was the colonial power here until 1968).

Even though there is this relationship, and some people in Swaziland like to think of Britain as the Mother Country.

I’ve been looking through newspapers in Britain over the last few months to find out what the Mother Country thinks of Swaziland. I have to report that there is hardly anything in the papers, except in ‘local’ papers that circulate to towns and small communities. What is being reported isn’t about what’s going on in Swaziland, instead it’s about what local people in the area the newspapers serve are doing to help Swaziland and the kingdom is being portrayed as helpless and unable to take care of itself. The impression given from these types of newspaper reports is that the ‘heroes’ of the story are whites of European descent lifting up the helpless Swazis - an image that is false.

The headline on this report from News Wales sums up what I mean, ‘Swansea woman saves African orphan’ The report is about a woman from Swansea (a large coastal city in south west Wales) who worked to bring a Swazi orphan Sanele Dlamini to Wales for surgery to correct a back condition that will help him lead a more active life.She became aware of his plight after the school set up links with a Swaziland orphanage for children affected by HIV/AIDS called the Lighthouse Project, where Zulu-speaking Sanele lives.

This story of this charitable work was also reported by the Media Newswire which said Sanele, who is almost 17 years old, lost his parents at the age of four, was moved onto foster parents, then finally ended up with a neighbour, who used Sanele as a slave.Sanele was forced to carry logs on his shoulder all day, every day, and the orphanage believes that this is what forced his spine into an S-shape.

The people who want to help save Swazis come in all ages. The Denbighshire Free Press, another newspaper from Wales, tells of 70-year-old Nigel Worth who plans to row his home-made boat from the River Clwyd to London to celebrate his birthday and raise money for the charity Swazaid, a Wales-based charity which raises support for the people of Swaziland in their fight against AIDS.

It is not only people in Britain who get a skewed version of life in Swaziland. At the other end of the age scale the Langley Times, British Columbia, Canada reports that students at Ezulwini Primary School in Swaziland are sitting six to a desk. At the school, pencils are cut in three so that the 700 students of this African school all have a writing implement.

Children in Canada at Langley Montessori School are taking part in a read-a-thon to raise money for the Ezulwini children so that they have more desks and much-needed pencils and other supplies. The read-a-thon raises money based on how many minutes the students spend reading books outside the classroom setting.

Elaine Ryans, a teacher at Langley Montessori, said, 'The school has no electricity, and a tap at the end of a pipe coming out of the ground provides the only water. Toilets are a hole in the ground.

'Many students walk several miles to school every morning, and all carry a bucket of water for their own use — drinking, cooking and hand washing. They also carry a few sticks which are put on a fire over which their lunch is cooked. This meal, usually consisting of corn porridge, is often their only meal of the day.'

Another report in a Canadian newspaper summed up the stereotypical vision of Africa that is prevalent in that country's media. The Guardian of Prince Edward Island reported on a local woman called Patti Wheatley who worked at the United Nations AIDS office in Mbabne (the Swaziland capital) for six months.

Patti tells the newspaper, ‘A lot of people don’t really understand what it’s like to live in Africa. They think, “Oh my gosh, Patti’s living in a hut. She’s got no running water. She’s got no food. How does she survive?” And it really isn’t like that in huge parts of Africa.

'There are huge inequalities, but it’s important that people recognize that not everyone is dying and not everyone lives in a hut. There’s a lot of wealth, especially in the cities. ’But sometimes that’s even more strange because you’ve living in a country where 70 per cent of the population lives on $1 a day and yet I can wake up every morning and go get my latte before I walk to work at the UN and pass 10 BMWs on the way there.’

So there you are. Swaziland is not only a kingdom of sick, orphaned pencil choppers, it also has a fair share of latte drinking BMW drivers. Let’s read more about them in the foreign press.