Swazi Police unconstitutionally broke up a demonstration by banned political party PUDEMO yesterday.
The PUDEMO General Secretary says police pointed a gun at her. One other leader was abducted by police and transported 40km away and dumped. One disabled man had his crutches taken away by police and was forced to walk without them.
Police charged at least four people with causing malicious damage.
The trouble started when the Peoples United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) tried to celebrate its 25th anniversary. It wanted to rally in (can you spot the irony here?) Freedom Square Park in Swaziland’s second city Manzini, but police had other ideas.
Swaziland has had a constitution for two years that allows for freedom of assembly and freedom of association, but both these constitutional rights were denied to PUDEMO.
First, in undemocratic Swaziland all political parties, including PUDEMO, are banned, thereby denying freedom of association.
Second, in Swaziland groups are required to ask for permission to hold meetings or marches, thereby denying the freedom of assembly. Even though this was unconstitutional, PUDEMO nonetheless sought permission to rally from Manzini City Council but was turned down.
PUDEMO believing that it had not been given adequate reasons for the ban decided to meet anyway and that’s when the trouble started.
According to reports in the Times Sunday today (6 July 2008) police rounded up leaders of PUDEMO from the streets of Manzini and took them to the regional police headquarters. One leader was taken across country to another city and dumped there.
The Times Sunday reported, ‘Mphandlana Shongwe said he was taken by police from the street in Manzini and then dumped in Mbabane [40km away].’
Shongwe told the Times Sunday,
‘When they took me I geared myself for the usual assault and believe me I was already prepared to be beaten, but the police decided to take me to Mbabane.
‘Now I am stuck here and I can’t go to Manzini because police have banned me [from going] there.
‘I am hungry now yet my home is in Manzini.
‘Why do police violate our rights yet we have a constitution, what threat do I pose?’
Personally, I think the Times Sunday gave an interesting insight into the mentality of Swazi police and the way they completely disregard the law and the rights of individuals.
Acting on their own initiative and without the order of a court of law, the police decided to pick Shongwe up and transport him across the country.
The Times Sunday reported,
‘Police spokesperson Superintendent Vusi Masuku said Shongwe had not been banned from Manzini, but merely displaced in order to maintain law and order.
‘“He made his intentions clear that he was going to partake in an unlawful rally therefore he was taken to Mbabane to prevent him from committing the crime of partaking in an unlawful rally,” said Masuku.’
What the police spokesman doesn’t say is why all of the protestors weren’t taken wholesale away from Manzini if the purpose was to ‘maintain law and order’?
The Times Sunday reported PUDEMO General Secretary Sphasha Dlamini saying that police officers pointed a gun at her.
Dlamini told the Times Sunday that she had tried to take photographs of ‘of police officers who were harassing one of the members of PUDEMO when they pointed a gun at her and demanded that she hand over the camera’.
Dlamini told the newspaper, ‘They said they were only going to delete the pictures of the police, but they cleared all the pictures in my camera before handing it back.’
The Times Sunday reported PUDEMO Information Officer Zakhele Mabuza saying that the police behaved brutally. Mabuza said that one PUDEMO member who is disabled and uses crutches ‘had them taken away by police and they further ordered him to walk without the aid of his crutches’.
The Times Sunday also reported evidence of a ‘dirty trick’ campaign on the part of the police.
At one point, the PUDEMO General Secretary Sphasha Dlamini had visited Manzini police station to check on people who had been detained there. When a colleague phoned her to find out what was going on ‘a female voice – suspected to be a police officer – answered the phone and claimed to be Dlamini’.
The newspaper reported,
‘This suspected police officer answered Dlamini’s phone and said, “I am Sphasha, I was not arrested, don’t worry, everything is fine.”
‘However, screams of a female voice could be heard from the background and when quizzed further the suspected police officer cut the line.
‘This newspaper [Times Sunday] tried to call from different numbers, but the same female voice answered the phone, but this time she said Dlamini was asleep at her home.
‘This was despite that Dlamini had called the newspaper earlier to report that some of her comrades had been arrested and she was in Manzini to check on them.
‘Dlamini was called several times, but the same woman answered the phone and when probed on where Dlamini was she would claim to be Dlamini and then cut the line.
‘When alerted to the screams of a woman in the background the woman would hang up.’
The Times Sunday reported that four PUDEMO members were charged with malicious damage by pelting stones two vehicles in Manzini.
The Times Sunday devoted four reports with pictures to the story of the banned rally. I notice that no reporters’ by-lines (the names of the authors of the report) appeared on the reports. This is unusual in the Swaziland press. In the past when reporters’ names have been left off stories it has often been an attempt on the part of the newspaper to protect the reporter from intimidation.
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