MORE CENSORSHIP OF SWAZI PRESS

Another outspoken critic of the undemocratic regime in Swaziland is in danger.

Musa Hlophe, coordinator of the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations, who writes a column each week in the Times Sunday is being leaned on by what he calls ‘powerful people’ from ‘highly placed sources within the state apparatus’.

He has been told not to write about ‘a certain office’.

Hlophe is too polite to say it out loud but the office in question is I’m told that of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

Hlophe told readers of the Times Sunday, ‘One of my recent articles apparently touched some raw nerves among our ruling elite.

‘My attention has been drawn to the fact that I should no longer write about a certain office. These powerful people are not from the Management of the Times Group of Newspapers but from highly placed sources within the state apparatus.’

He goes on, ‘Why are the mighty and powerful so afraid of the truth? This is asking me to censor myself and to deny the public at least my version of the truth and I cannot, in all conscience, do that.’

Hlophe is not the first critic of the undemocratic regime of King Mswati and Barnabas Dlamini, the man he illegally appointed prime minister of Swaziland.

Mario Masuku, the president of the banned organisation the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) was forced to stop writing for the Times Sunday and Mfomfo Nkhambule had to abandon his weekly column for the Times of Swaziland. Both men were told they could not criticise Swaziland’s ruling elite.

King Mswati has form when it comes to censorship in the Swazi media as I demonstrated in a report I wrote for the Media Institute of Southern Africa.

Also, in 2007 King Mswati threatened to close down the entire Times of Swaziland group of newspapers if it did not retract a report it published, sourced from Norway, that King Mswati was partly responsible for the poor economic state of Swaziland.

Meanwhile, Hlophe has told his readers he will carry on writing. I hope he gets the chance.