SWAZI CONSTITUTION IS USELESS

From time to time a report appears in the newspapers that proves beyond doubt that Swaziland is not a democracy and that the new Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

One such report appeared in both the Weekend Observer and the Swazi News this week (13 October 2007).

The report stated that the High Court had granted chief Tikhontele Dlamini of Lomshiyo area an order stopping his headman from holding a community meeting. The chief told the High Court that he was the only one with the right to call meetings, as chief of the area, and if anyone else called meetings it would undermine his powers and rights as chief.

The High Court granted the order banning the meeting even though the Swaziland Constitution (section 24) allows any person the ‘freedom to communicate ideas and information without interference (whether the communication be to the public generally or to any person or class of persons)’.

So there you have it: anyone can hold and express an opinion – but only if their chief agrees with it.

I was disappointed with both newspapers that ran the court report because neither of them saw the wider implication of the decision. Both newspapers simply wrote the news story as a report of an event that had taken place in court without putting it into a wider context.

This is the usual way of reporting in Swaziland. To reporters anything that happens in the kingdom happens in isolation. In their world one event is not connected to any other. To give a simple example: hardly a day goes by without there being reports in the papers about traffic accidents. Often (but not always) these accidents include kombis or buses. Sometimes the newspapers go so far as to identify the causes of the accidents as bad driving or poor maintenance of vehicles used to carry the public.

The fact that there are a number of such stories about traffic accidents caused by poorly maintained vehicles tells us that there is a much bigger news story here that goes beyond simply recording the event of a traffic accident.

I would say that there is a very serious issue about road safety in Swaziland that isn’t being reported. Here are a few questions journalists could ask: why are the vehicles badly maintained?, how many unsafe vehicles are there on our roads in any one day?; why don’t transport operators themselves seem to be interested in safety?, how much money is being made by operators willing to run kombis and buses that are death traps?

Although the job of journalists is to write facts and tell readers what is going on it is also their job to explain to people why things happen. In the case of the High Court judgement the journalist got the first part right but failed badly on the second.