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Monday 7 January 2008

UNHAPPY NEW YEAR FOR SWAZILAND

Welcome back to the blog after the holiday break.

Swaziland’s media has been full of retrospectives looking back at the past year, 2007, or looking forward to what may be in store in the coming year.

It’s lazy journalism designed to fill up space during the holiday period. And nearly all of it is worthless. See for example The Swazi News, which on the last Saturday of the year filled an entire page with pictures of front pages from 2007. Pointless.

Also, anyone who regularly reads Swaziland’s newspapers knows that most journalists – even those who are given space in their own comment columns to write about matters that are supposed to be of public importance – are incapable of putting a coherent sentence together and do not have any original ideas.

That’s why one comment column published over the holiday period shines out like a beacon. Needless to say a journalist didn’t write it.

Bishop M B Mabuza, the chairperson of the civil society organisation SCCCO, wrote the comment piece in question in the Swazi News on 29 December 2007. He analysed how Swaziland’s new constitution is a ‘fig-leaf to cover the international shame of 33 years of rule by decree’.

This is part of what the bishop wrote. ‘What we now have is a piece of paper that is not being promoted or even defended by the government. The rights and duties that are enshrined in it are not being protected or enforced. This year has seen defenceless suspects killed by the police, public meetings broken up or prevented from happening, union members harassed, property taken without due court processes, newspaper editors intimidated, journalists threatened by government. The people of Swaziland are in the dark about the constitution and their rights and the government seems more than happy to keep them that way.

‘The kingdom continues to wear two faces, the one it shows to the outside world, a happy, peaceful united democratic nation. The other face is the reality of the internally driven, politically bankrupt, corrupt and profoundly anti-democratic system that is under performing economically. Rather than investing the public coffers in relation to areas of greatest need and with the potential for greatest results it squanders them on economically unproductive projects that do little more than stroke already inflated egos.

‘It is the year that many comparative international studies have started to peak behind the veil and show that Swaziland consistently is one of the worst performers in terms of human rights, political participation, civil rights, governance, corruption and the use of natural resources.’

The bishop concludes his article, ‘All in all, 2007 has not been a good year for Swaziland, the terrible effects of HIV / AIDS, drought, poverty, unemployment, corruption and poor governance continue to unnecessarily kill far too many people and to sap the ability of the country to perform. Our “unique” system and style of governance wastes time, effort, resources and energy that could be better spent on really tackling the issues.’

He goes on, ‘We say to the democrats in government, reach out respect diversity of opinion and pluralism, embrace civil society and work with us in partnership. The present system has failed and can only continue to do so.’

The bishop’s analysis reminds me of the ‘open letter’ to the Swazi media written in October 2007 by Derek von Wissell, of the HIV / AIDS NGO, NERCHA. Von Wissel identified Swaziland as a nation ‘on its knees’.

He wrote that the kingdom’s ability to stand and face adversity is slowly being eaten away. ‘HIV, death, disease and poverty have sapped the very strength required to overcome these challenges.’

Sadly, nobody seems to have taken much notice of Von Wissell’s warning and I don’t expect anyone in any power will care what the bishop thinks either.

See also
SWAZILAND IN GOVERNANCE DENIAL
A COUNTRY ON ITS KNEES

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