SWAZILAND KING ‘BLOCKS WOMEN MPs’

There’s a lot of puzzlement surrounding the news this week that the Swaziland Constitution has to be suspended because there are too many members of parliament.

Chief Gija Dlamini, head of the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC), says that Swaziland cannot elect another four women to parliament to meet the requirements of the constitution – because parliament is full up.

What he means is that there are already 55 MPs in the House of Assembly and there are no vacancies.

You remember Gija, he’s the water board electrician who many people believe was illegally appointed to oversee the Swaziland nation elections last year (2008). The constitution said the chair of the EBC had to be an experienced lawyer and Gija is not.

Gija says he has discussed the problem with the Swaziland Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini (who was himself illegally appointed to his post) and parliamentary authorities but they haven’t yet come up with a solution.

Of course, the sensible thing is to increase the number of MPs to 59 to accommodate the women.

According to a report in the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily news source, the Prime Minister wants to increase the number of MPs and hold elections to get the four women elected.

But here’s what’s puzzling. If he wants to do this and Chief Gija, head of the EBC, agrees it’s the right thing to do (which he does) why haven’t they done it?

Gija said his office was ready to fulfil the constitutional requirement and he was waiting for the ‘country’s authorities’ to give him the go ahead with the elections.

So which of the ‘country’s authorities’ are standing in the way? Isn’t the Prime Minister in charge of the government?

Oh of course: step forward King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. The king is no friend of the constitution and no friend of women’s equality (just ask his wives who number at least 13 or 14: we can’t be sure because this is information the Swazi people are not allowed to have).

Word in Swaziland is that the king is dragging his feet on this issue because he wants to pay back all those women who marched against him last August in protest at the 6 million US dollars eight of his wives spent on a worldwide shopping trip.