‘DEMOCRACY IS EVIL’ – SWAZI CANON

Fresh evidence has emerged about how ignorant people are in Swaziland about democracy.

Father Canon Magongo of the Anglican Church called democracy ‘evil’ and said it would never be realised anywhere.

Magongo expressed his deep ignorance when he said that if a government is elected by 51 percent of the electorate, they override the other 49 percent. He called people who were champions of democracy, ‘evil’.

Magongo, whose comments were reported in the Swazi Observer on Monday (26 May 2008), was a speaker at a governance and elections workshop hosted by the Swaziland Council of Churches.

His remarks are deeply worrying because Magongo was supposed to be educating people about the forthcoming election in Swaziland. If he represents the calibre of people involved in the so-called ‘civic education’ on the elections that is taking place throughout the kingdom at present, we shouldn’t be surprised if people are less than enthusiastic about the elections.

One reason for Magongo’s ignorance is that Swaziland isn’t a democracy and despite a new constitution that came into being in 2006, the kingdom is still strictly controlled by King Mswati III. Political parties are banned and most avenues for open debate within Swaziland are blocked. This lack of opportunity to debate openly tends to generate ignorance. It is, however, a great pity that the Swazi media give space to people to peddle this ignorance to a wide audience.

In a separate elections-related story published on the same day, the Observer told of how ‘anti election’ pamphlets had been found at Zombodze. The newspaper described how election officers ‘learned with shock’ of the existence of the pamphlets.

The Observer reported, ‘The pamphlets were belittling the elections process and the political dispensation of the country.’

Of course, in non-democratic Swaziland such sentiments are not allowed and the pamphlets were taken to the police who are now investigating. Quite what crime has been committed here is unclear, but what is certain is that any publication that is critical of the status quo in Swaziland is unwelcome.

The Shiselweni Regional Administrator, when asked for a comment by the Observer said distributing anti-election pamphlets was ‘barbaric’.

So that just about sums up the attitude to the Swazi elections – ‘democracy is evil’ and anti-election sentiments are ‘barbaric’.

Maybe we should just abandon the elections now.