SWAZI KING SEES NO ZIMBABWE CRISIS

King Mswati III of Swaziland is in hot water for claiming at a news conference that in Zimbabwe ‘things are going well so far’.

He told incredulous reporters that he had heard no reports that things were bad in Zimbabwe.

King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, was speaking at the end of an extraordinary summit of the Southern African Development Community in Sandton, South Africa on Saturday (20 June 2009).

The President of South Africa Jacob Zuma had been asked by two leaders of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change party to get the SADC to intervene in their dispute with President Robert Mugabe over many issues that have arisen since Mugabe stole power after last year’s election.

According to a report in the Star, Johannesburg, when a journalist asked how King Mswati could say that things were well in Zimbabwe when there were daily reports of people being abducted and jailed, the Swazi king said ‘nothing official’ had been brought to the SADC’s attention about such things.

If the SADC were informed officially, it would take up these issues, he said.

King Mswati was saved from a pounding by journalists by Zuma who stopped them asking further questions.

‘If we start discussing Zimbabwe now, we will end up with headlines tomorrow as though this was what the summit was about,’ he said.

King Mswati must be the only person in the world who hasn’t heard about the state of Zimbabwe. Even as the SADC was meeting at the weekend, Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was being heckled off the stage in London, UK, by disgruntled Zimbabwean expatriates he had urged to return home to help rebuild their country. They were unhappy about his decision to share power with Mugabe and heckled Tsvangirai so much he was forced to cut short his speech.

Things are so bad in Zimbabwe that Tsvangirai, who let me remind you is prime minister of Zimbabwe, may be prosecuted because he went overseas on an unauthorised trip.

Earlier this month King Mswati was feted by Mugabe in Zimbabwe. At a banquet Mugabe praised the (undemocratic) system of government in Swaziland, where political parties are banned.

Meanwhile in Swaziland, the Swazi Observer newspaper, which is in effect owned by King Mswati, had the headline KING SHINES AT SADC SUMMIT in its edition today (22 Juner 2009) but made no mention of Zimbabwe.

The Observer quoted Barnabas Dlamini, who was illegally appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland by King Mswati, who praised the king’s ‘able leadership, vision, wisdom and guidance’.