Swaziland’s King Mswati III is back in his home kingdom after an extensive trip to Egypt for the African Union summit and to Uganda for a state-visit.
Readers of this blog who live in Swaziland will be well aware of these facts because the state-owned media have been giving the king’s journey extensive coverage.
Even the nominally independent newspaper, the Swazi Observer, has been devoting pages per day to the King. The Observer is generally known as ‘the King’s newspaper’ so this is no surprise. The Observer’s chief editor Musa Ndlangamandla travelled with ‘His Majesty’ (in the deferential way the newspaper likes to refer to the King).
As I said in my recently published research on censorship in Swazi newsrooms, it is the job of the chief editor (whoever holds the post, not just the present one) to report the King in a ‘good light’. And the reporting of this trip has been no exception.
I got the impression that there may not have been too much to write about this trip because Ndlangamandla had some difficulty filling the wide-open spaces of the Observer that had been left to him.
That can be the only reason why readers of the Observer (2 July 2008) had to put up with a report about problems the chief editor was having with his underwear (believe me you don’t want to know the details.)
Meanwhile, Swaziland’s only other ‘independent’ newspaper, the Times of Swaziland had to rely on the Internet for its stories.
As is common with newspapers in Swaziland, the Times ‘lifted’ reports that had already appeared on the Internet sites of newspapers outside of the kingdom.
The Times relied on New Vision, a Ugandan newspaper for its coverage.
Uganda is a country with a big human rights problem and the country’s newspapers are not very different from those in Swaziland when it comes to keeping on the right side of those in power.
So in the Times yesterday (10 July 2008) we were treated to New Vision’s report of King Mswati III praising a local ‘kingdom’ within Uganda. The King is reported to have praised the kingdom’s parliament and also praised kingdoms generally.
We should remember at this point that Swaziland is a kingdom (not a country or a state) and its people are subjects (not citizens). King Mswati is reported saying that kingdom’s ‘play an important role in poverty alleviation, job creation, access to health care and social services’.
I’ll leave it to you to decide how highly the Kingdom of Swaziland scores in each of these areas.
The King of Buganda in turn praised the Swazi King ‘for the peace and stability it has established in its kingdom for 200 years’.
The Times also lifted a story from New Vision about Swaziland committing to buy anti-AIDS ARV drugs from Swaziland.
I suppose if the Times cannot afford to send its own reporter to join the King on overseas’ visits (or indeed doesn’t want to) it needs to get its news from an alternative source: hence its reliance on New Vision.
What a pity then that it didn’t also share this report from New Vision.
When King Mswati of Swaziland jetted in on Monday, a state House official asked all female journalists to step aside because they had ‘breached a protocol of dress code’ and would not cover the function of the king’s arrival. They were wearing trousers. But after haggling, they were let in. When the journalists inquired from their Swazi colleagues whether female journalists are not allowed to wear trousers they were told they can wear anything as long as it is decent. The Ugandans concluded that they were being protected from royal attention. Mswati has 16 wives.
What can they mean the women had to be ‘protected from royal attention?’ and what has this to do with having 16 wives?....
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