Did you know that Swaziland is too ‘rich’ to receive development aid even though about 70 percent of the kingdom’s population live on less than one US dollar a day?
Did you know that the unemployment rate in Swaziland is 40 percent, and more than four out of ten Swazis depend on some form of food assistance to stay alive?
Did you also know that about 20 percent of the Swazi population controls more than 80 percent of the kingdom’s wealth?
If you answered yes to the questions above you’ve been reading the foreign press. If you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, don’t worry you are no different from all the people in Swaziland who have to rely on Swazi journalists for their information.
I was prompted to ask the questions after reading both the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer last Thursday (17 January 2007).
They both carried reports about the European Union Commissioner to Lesotho and Swaziland Peter Beck Christiansen who signed an agreement to hand over to Swaziland up to E630 million (about 100 million US dollars). He also gave a wide-ranging speech about the development needs in Swaziland, which included some comments about how the Swazi government was using money previously donated.
I don’t think the Swazi journalists quite understood what was being said, since the headlines they put on their reports contradict one another.
The Times had this headline EU WARNS GOVT ON SPENDING
The Observer had this headline EC BOSS PLEASED WITH GOVERNMENT
The Times reported that during his speech Christiansen said, ‘Social inequalities are increasingly leaving Swaziland with one of the most skewed income distributions.
‘I think it is a particular responsibility of the country to ensure that every citizen receives a fair share of the national wealth.’
Christiansen did not elaborate on this point of view and true to form the Swazi journalists didn’t think to ask him what he meant.
I’ve written before about the capacities of Swazi journalists and how they don’t ask questions.
There are a number of reasons for this. One is cultural: people in Swaziland are not encouraged to ask questions, especially of people in authority. The second is more practical: the journalists don’t have the capacity to understand and interpret what is being said to them and therefore they only reproduce in their newspapers the words of speeches and press handouts.
That is why it took an overseas news agency, the Inter Press Service (IPS) from Johannesburg, South Africa, (17 January 2008) to fill in the gaps for us.
IPS followed up on the Christiansen presentation and was able to reveal to its readers the facts that I used at the beginning of this post.
Its report went on.
‘The economy is performing poorly, especially in comparison with the other nations of the region,’ said Richard Ndwandwe, an investment advisor with an Mbabane bank, told IPS.
‘We have not achieved 3.0 percent economic growth in a decade, and the central bank says an annual growth rate of 3.6 percent is required just to keep up with population growth,’ Ndwandwe said, stressing that the, ‘net result has been a deterioration in the standard of living for almost all Swazis.’
‘It is the rich minority that is skewing the statistical picture, and making the country appear better off than it is for most people,’ explained Ndwandwe.
‘Social inequalities are increasingly leaving Swaziland with one of the world's most-skewered income distributions,’ noted Peter Beck Christiansen, the European Union’s (EU) ambassador to Swaziland.
Colonial-era landholders and business people who did not have their properties compromised when Swaziland gained its independence 40 years ago, government leaders, and a small - but well-off - clique of Swazi entrepreneurs have amassed wealth that has raised the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Less than twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of the nation's wealth, according to the World Bank. But, the World Bank - using GDP to classify the country's state of economic development - has placed Swaziland in the ‘low-middle income’ category of nations.
‘We are far from being a middle income country, but we are not considered a low income country, and this makes a world of difference when it comes to accessing development funding,’ said Ndwandwe.
‘It is not a fair rating,’ Abdoulaye Balde, the country director for the WFP, told IPS from his Mbabane office that coordinates the world’s response to Swaziland's food shortage crisis. ‘It does not take into consideration that way most people are living. We are always telling this to our donors,’ he stressed.
The director of another humanitarian relief NGO - which receives World Bank logistical assistance - said, ‘There is so much need in the world and so many peoples competing for limited resources that it is easy for an NGO to go by World Bank guidelines to decline assistance to a country like Swaziland. It’s not necessarily fair.’
Several times this past year, Prime Minister Themba Dlamini and Majozi Sithole, his finance minister, reminded the country that Swaziland does not qualify for low-interest loans or interest-free grants awarded to countries classified as ‘low income’ although a large majority of Swazis live in absolute poverty.
Denied developmental funds, the government's response has been to encourage economic growth by boosting the private sector, with the hope of increased tax revenue from businesses.
While foreign direct investment (FDI) is sought by globetrotting teams of government officials, ordinary Swazis are encouraged to become small entrepreneurs.
Christiansen signed a treaty with Swazi leadership for a 100 million US dollar aid package, Wednesday.
‘I think that it is a particular responsibility of the country to ensure that ever citizen received a fair share of the national wealth,’ Christiansen said.
However, not even the country’s small - and by law nonexistent - opposition groups who speak about countering the ruling monarchy’s grip on governance, have called for wealth redistribution.
‘The rich are not going away, and that's the only way to make Swaziland statistically a low income country,’ Anthony Simelane, an attorney based in the central commercial hub Manzini, told IPS.
‘There is not going to be wealth redistribution that would benefit the poor. The country is denied development funds to help the poor, so all government can hope to do is boost the economy and reap taxes,’ Simelane said.
The impediment to this plan is government corruption. Sithole has estimated that the amount of government money lost to various forms of corruption annually equals the country’s national debt.
Christiansen touched on corruption when he signed the EU's developmental agreement. ‘I have learned in my three years in Swaziland that no amount of funding or donor assistance can lead to development if the right conditions are not in place.
‘Deficiencies in the areas of governance have and will continue to seriously limit your development progress, with or without the HIV/AIDS threat,’ he told his Swazi hosts.
The EU's aid package is contingent upon the implementation of what Christensen called ‘an ambitious governance reform programme to enable Swaziland to reach at least the level of other Southern African countries’.
See also
SWAZI REPORTERS CAN’T EXPLAIN
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