CENSORSHIP AT SWAZILAND ELECTRICITY

Swaziland’s only electricity supplier, the Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC), has banned its workers from talking to the media.

The company has warned that disciplinary charges will be made against anyone who dares to talk about the company in the media.

The Times of Swaziland reported (4 June 2008) that a senior manager at SEC called in the workers’ trade union representatives and told them ‘to refrain forthwith from making statements in the media that would bring the organisation into disrepute’.

SEC has been riddled with rumours of corruption in the past and is presently embroiled in a row with the Swazi Government about the high price it charges for electricity. There is also a protracted court case between SEC and staff over the suspension of senior managers at the company.

An SEC senior manager said there was nothing sinister about the ban as ‘it was in line with the company’s rules and regulations’.

Did the senior manager say this last statement with a straight face? What he is in effect saying is that we make the rules and if the rules are that you don’t talk to the media, then you don’t. The fact that the rule is nonsense doesn’t matter.

People have the right to talk to whom they like about what they like and SEC can’t go about making up its own rules. There is the little thing of the Swazi Constitution that allows for freedom of speech.

SEC is trying it on. The company knows that its incompetence and corruption is in danger of being exposed to the wider public. Bullying its employees into silence may work for a while but eventually the truth will come out.

I hope the newspapers don’t let up on SEC – and I hope the workers at the company have the courage to continue telling us the truth.

First published 6 June 2008