The Nation magazine is blazing a new trail for journalism in Swaziland with its recent coverage of King Mswati III.
In this month’s issue (June 2008), the Nation, Swaziland’s only independent comment magazine, reports on the US documentary Without The King which features many Swazi people complaining about King Mswati III, his family, and the undemocratic way he rules Swaziland.
The Nation says the documentary ‘tells the shocking story of Swaziland’s royal family excesses against the backdrop of an impoverished nation’.
The views contained in Without The King (and, I have to say, the Nation’s report of it) are so specific, and in the context of what Swazi media usually report about the king, so strong, that the Nation says that copies of pirated DVDs of the documentary ‘are found around the country given to trusted individuals under the table. So secretive are people about it, one would have thought it a seditious pamphlet.’
This is not the first time the Nation has written critically of the king. In its April 2008 edition, the magazine reported on how much of Swaziland’s national budget was spent on the king and his family.
The magazine called this income ‘obscene’.
Readers of this blogsite who live outside of Swaziland might not realise just how unusual (and, I think, brave) this reporting from the Nation is.
In as yet unpublished research I have been conducting in the past few months, journalists in Swaziland have told me that they dare not publish stories or comments about the king’s finances (King Mswati’s lavish lifestyle is from time to time covered in the international press, but never at home). Nor may they publish anything that might ‘incite’ people against the king. At one time, the king is said to have directly told journalists they must not refer to him as a ‘dictator’. (I am sure readers can see the irony for themselves in this last statement).
Because of the genuine fear that the king might close down publications that offend him (he has done it before and threatened to do it to the Times Sunday in March 2007), the Swazi media leave the king alone.
Not so the Nation. We must now wait and see what happens next. If the Nation goes unpunished by the king, it should encourage those in Swaziland’s independent media who claim they would like to say more about the true state of life in Swaziland, but do not for fear of retribution.
I can’t see a new spirit of criticism being allowed in Swaziland. For that reason I fear for the future of the Nation.
See also
SWAZI KING’S FUNDING ‘ILLEGAL’
‘OBSCENE’ INCOME OF SWAZI KING REVEALED
SWAZILAND ‘REVOLUTION’ DOCO ON DVD
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