SWAZILAND KING A LOUSY JOURNALIST

I see King Mswati III of Swaziland has turned journalist – almost.

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper he in effect owns, reproduced an article he is said to have written for an international magazine called FIRST.

The king’s journalism lives up (or do I mean down?) to the standards of the Observer – it has scant regard for the truth and could better be described as propaganda.

King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, writes about the wonders of Swaziland. He begins as he means to go on, in a fantasyland of his own.

‘The Kingdom of Swaziland continues to use its resources and capabilities to expand investment opportunities for both foreign and local business, as part of our national strategy for socio-economic growth.’

Wrong. In fact the complete opposite is the case. It was only last month (November 2009) that the Observer itself reported consultant Peter Carr who said Swaziland was not deemed as a good place for investors to set up business because of its small market, its people are too poor and Swaziland’s limited international reputation as a destination for foreign direct investment.

The King goes on to write about Swaziland’s National Development Strategy – Vision 2022, which he says will ‘improve the standard of living for all our people through access to quality services, wealth creation and employment opportunities’.

Wrong again. Hasn’t he been listening to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which for years has been warning the governments, he appoints, that the public service wage bill is far too high and it and public services generally must be slashed? How does that square with improved standards of living, quality services and wealth creation?

Then he comes up with this classic, ‘As a peace loving nation, the Kingdom of Swaziland strongly believes in promoting dialogue to address national issues and challenges. It is for that reason that our country is known all over the world to be the oasis of peace.’

I won’t even start to pull that one apart – read just about every post on this blog to see the lies in his statement.

There’s a lot more of this ‘journalism’ in his article, but I won’t waste your time taking each and every paragraph apart.

Someone needs to tell King Mswati, his newspaper the Swazi Observer and FIRST, that just by saying something is true doesn’t make it so. A little more scepticism on the part of Swaziland’s journalists wouldn’t come amiss.