SWAZI STRUGGLE: READ ALL ABOUT IT

Inspired (if that’s the right word) by the reader who wrote in to direct us to the EISA website that contained information about the struggle for democracy in Swaziland that might be useful for school students studying Swazi history, I have been going through my own collection of research papers (etc) on Swaziland.

I came across a number that might be of interest to people who want more information about the need for democracy in Swaziland.

I have uploaded a few of them to the internet and I hope people find them useful. I also have a number of papers / reports etc. that are not specifically about the struggle for democracy in Swaziland but cover various social and economic issues in the kingdom (e.g. children’s’ rights, gender, the economy). If people are interested in seeing some of these, please let me know.

Also, if you have any other documents you think I should add to the list, please tell me about them.

Here are the papers I have already uploaded.

Overhauling the Feudal Regime in Swaziland by Onadipe, Abiodun, published in the Contemporary Review, 12/1/1996. Here

International Commission of Jurists. Report on Swaziland 2003. The International Commission of Jurists' Centre for the Independence for Judges and Lawyers (ICJ/CIJL), sent a fact-finding mission to Swaziland to assess various threats against judicial independence, the rule of law and the administration of justice resulting from an Executive decision to disregard two Appellate Court rulings, an action that directly led to the resignation of the nation's entire Court of Appeal. Here

Is Swaziland a Democracy? Paper Presented by Kinslom Shongwe, General Secretary: The People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), 19 March 2003, at the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA). Here

Swaziland at the Crossroads – 2005 - Country Report from Freedom House. There is no tradition of democracy in the Swazi polity. Since its emergence in the early 19th century, the Swazi state's political culture has been authoritarian with power centralized in a hereditary monarchy. Here

Swaziland: The Clock Is Ticking, International Crisis Group, Policy Briefing 14 July 2005.Swaziland has been an absolute monarchy for more than 30 years, with a royal leadership that ignores worsening social ills and a small elite that is often openly corrupt. Here

The new Swaziland constitution and its impact on media freedom, by Richard Rooney, Global Media Journal Africa Edition No 2, 2008. The paper concludes that there has been no discernible progress on media freedom since the new constitution came into effect in Swaziland and there is little reason to be optimistic in the near future that this will change. Here

Swaziland Election Dossier, 2003, No 1. Published by EISA, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa. One of two publications that studied the 2003 elections in Swaziland. Here

Swaziland Election Dossier, 2003, No 2. Published by EISA, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa. The second of two publications that studied the 2003 elections in Swaziland. Here