I have criticised the Swazi news media for their inability to put events into context. When yet another kombi crashes because its brakes fail, no reporter thinks to ask questions about the poor maintenance of public service vehicles.
So here I offer you a case study on how it can be done. This report is from the Mail and Guardian newspaper, in South Africa.
It is headlined ‘Swaziland’s constitutional crisis’ and it takes as its starting point a court decision in Swaziland last week to ban a strike by civil servants.
This decision was widely reported in the Swazi media but what they all failed to do was to tell their readers the significance of the decision.
The Mail and Guardian report reminds readers of the International Monetary Fund’s demands that Swaziland reduces the number of jobs in the civil service. The report then talks about how the court decision is ‘the latest government clampdown on civil society’ and details some of the others that have happened recently.
The report then details how the Swazi police have been mobilised to stop trade unionists meeting.
Activists are interviewed and one puts the present court decision in a historical context.
The other side of the case is then put by a senior Swazi attorney.
The report is reproduced below. You can find it online here
The Swazi government struck another blow to the labour movement this week when it won a court order to halt a national public-servants’ strike scheduled for Wednesday.
The strike was intended to demonstrate support for public-sector unions, which are in negotiations with government over work conditions in the sector and the contentious issue of retrenchments.
The Swazi government is bowing to International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands to reduce public sector expenditure, which the lending organisation insists is too high.
Musa Hhlope, an activist with the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO), said the 20 000-strong public service could be reduced by 10% to 20% and this would deal a severe blow to the population. He also expressed concern that “the cuts will come at the bottom of the tree”.
This week’s court order against the strike is the latest government clampdown on civil society. Last week the security forces broke up a meeting convened by the Royal Swazi Police Service, a newly formed union for police officers, which the government refuses to register.
The SCCCO said: “These actions by the police at the instigation of government and other structures are trampling underfoot the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
These rights are enshrined not only in the constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland, but also in the international treaties on human rights that the government has ratified.”
The leader of the Royal Swazi Police Service, Buhle Dlamini, who registered the union at the end of last year, was sacked about three months ago for forming the trade union.
He told the Mail & Guardian that he was man-handled by the police when they broke up the meeting. “I was throttled by a senior police officer,” he said. “This is the second time they have blocked a planned meeting.”
Vincent Ncongwane, the secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Labour, also criticised the rough way in which police dispersed the gathering. He argued there was no threat that the meeting, which took place on church premises, would have become unruly.
Another activist, who refused to be identified, said that the crackdowns were underpinned by a 1973 royal decree requiring police permission for meetings that might be deemed to be of a political nature, but that this violated the spirit of the constitution. “There is a freedom of assembly [in the new constitution] unless there is fear that peace and order might be breached,” the activist said.
Dlamini also questioned why it had taken six months for the court to deliver a judgement on the union’s urgent application challenging the government order preventing its registration. “It doesn’t matter what the king says, what matters is what the constitution says,” Dlamini said.
Hlophe speculated that the delay was “indicative of either conspiracy or incompetence, neither of which is exactly desirable in a judiciary”. He said: “There are certain judges who have shown extreme moral courage and probity in the face of almost overwhelming political and cultural pressure from the government, but it is by no means all of them.”
However, a senior Swazi attorney, who preferred to remain anonymous, defended the courts: “The courts are pretty independent. They will not shirk from hearing any matter. Perhaps the delay has been caused by an administrative error.” He said that, as a rule, “political cases are not normally taken as urgent”.
Such crackdowns have become increasingly frequent in Swaziland. An international youth meeting, with participants from the Southern African Youth Movement, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands, that was scheduled for October 10 was cancelled when the government learned that Jan Sithole, the secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, was to address the group.
Hlophe said the government made it clear to the organisers of the meeting that if it was to go ahead they had to apologise for not inviting government officials, allow police officers to monitor and record the proceedings and drop Sithole as a guest speaker.
Government spokesperson Percy Simelane dismissed this as a lie and an attempt by some within civil society to “blacklist” the government.
He maintained the government did nothing to prevent the meeting from being held.
He argued that when there was a meeting with participants from abroad the “cabinet has to know” and “no one in government knew of this”. He declined to comment on the police union case as it was “sub judice” and “only the courts can decide” on such an issue. Simelane did, however, explain why the meeting had been disrupted in the first place.
He said the conveners of the meeting had not followed procedure. “There are certain times that you have to inform the police for security reasons.” The fact that those gathered were police officers was immaterial as “you never know what might happen”.
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