We often hear complaints (especially from journalists) in Swaziland that the kingdom doesn’t get a good press in overseas' media. In my experience that isn’t really true.
The truth is that very little about Swaziland appears in any media outside of the kingdom. One of the big problems we have is that the rest of the world generally ignores Swaziland because Swaziland isn’t important in global terms. Unlike, say, South Africa, it doesn’t have strategically placed ports that are vital to world shipping (think of Durban and Cape Town). Nor, does Swaziland have rich mineral resources that are important to world manufacturing.
Over the past three years I have been researching how the foreign news media reports on Swaziland. I’ll write in detail about what I have discovered another time.
One thing I want to share with you is some of the reports that I have found that were originally made to be shown on television. Some of these reports have been put on Internet sites so it is possible to view them on the computer.
From time to time on this site I’ll point out some of these reports so you can watch them yourself and make your own mind up about what picture they paint of Swaziland.
The one I have linked to here was made for UNICEF Television and distributed to television stations around the world. UNICEF Television is funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund and is a global news service that focuses on the health, education, equality and protection of children. Their reports tend to concentrate on developing countries.
The theme of the report which lasts about 2 mins 30 secs is ‘In Swaziland grandmothers shoulder the burden of Aids’ and it features 64-year-old Evelyn Sikholiwe Similani (pictured) who talks about how Aids has affected her life.
You can get the clip here:
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